From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jun 10 17:56:20 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from spork.pantherdragon.org (spork.pantherdragon.org [206.29.168.146]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5613D37B405; Mon, 10 Jun 2002 17:56:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from spark.techno.pagans (spark.techno.pagans [4.61.202.145]) by spork.pantherdragon.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFAA2471DD; Mon, 10 Jun 2002 17:56:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pantherdragon.org (speck.techno.pagans [172.21.42.2]) by spark.techno.pagans (Postfix) with ESMTP id AFF30FFD5; Mon, 10 Jun 2002 17:56:09 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <3D054AA9.164F3614@pantherdragon.org> Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 17:56:09 -0700 From: Darren Pilgrim X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Communications Machine Cc: questions@freebsd.org, small@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Compact Flash vs ATA Disks References: <001401c210a7$f72b2d20$a800000a@transcon> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Communications Machine wrote: > > I need a comparison in terms primarily of performance and reliability > between using compact flash to boot vs a standard ATA disk drive on a > machine used primarily as a router/firewall. > > I would assume since there is no mechanical spinup/spindown issues with > compact flash, that it would therefore be quicker to startup off of; however > one must still wait for the PC bios anyways... so will it really make that > much of a difference? Guess it really comes down to transfer rates: which is > generally speaking faster (bear in mind only in terms of reading, as > writting to disk will be extremely infrequent). > > In terms of reliability, what is the life expentancy of compact flash vs a > standard ATA disk drive? Again, I believe the mechanical issues involved > with a disk drive may be overcome with compact flash disks, but I don't > honestly know enough about compact flash. CF cards have a wider operating temperature, don't generate nearly as much heat as even a 5400 RPM disk, can take much higher impact shocks, are slient, easier to swap out than a hard disk, are ATAPI compatible, and are available in sizes up to 1GB. They're also slow, though throughput is a minor issue when only used to boot from. A 256MB CF card costs about as much as a new 80GB 7200 RPM drive and a 1GB CF card runs about the same as an IBM 73LZX 73GB SCSI disk. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message