[Coco] 2gig CF card killed

[Roger Taylor]

At 09:39 AM 3/22/2008, you wrote:
>Roger Taylor wrote:
> > Well, I think I've successfully killed a nice Lexar 2gig CF card after
> > many attempts of installing Windows 98SE on it to run on my Compaq
> > IA-1 internet appliance.
> > ...
> >
> > I did so many installs and formats, that I think I reached the
> > ~300,000 erase/write limit of the card.
> >
>My understanding was that the write limitation is per-memory location,
>or per-cell, not for the entire card.  I also have this vagu

So this would mean, byte #1002 (or the sector or granule it's in) 
would have it's own life cycle compared to the other sectors or 
granules?  I suppose this is not THAT different from the life of a 
hard drive and having the ability to mask out the bad sectors.  But 
300,000 writes seems like just a few weeks or months of time on a 
busy system using a swap file.  Without a swap file, what.. a year or 
two?  Nobody really knows.







>e
>recollection that at least some kinds of modern flash memory module (CF?
>some USB memory sticks?) try to spread writes out across the memory
>locations to reduce that effect.  Maybe I'm wrong about that though.
>
>I find it a little hard to believe that what you report doing could have
>reached that limit, unless Linux and Windows were creating and making
>much use of swap files on th CF.  I could see that wearing it out.
>Maybe the Windows installation routine uses an exorbitant number of
>individual writes?  Maybe you should try installing Windows on an
>ordinary hard drive, then cloning the drive onto the CF after the
>installation is complete.  That would reduce writes to a bare minimum.
> > My question is, with the IDE interfaces in use and people using CF
> > cards as their main CoCo HD, how long would you expect the card to
> > make it as a hard drive knowing that the cards were designed with a
> > limited number of writes possible, and also when the card reaches this
> > point, is it readable-only then?  Mine can't even be accessed now.
> >
>I'm not sure what the failure mode is there.  I ruined one by hooking up
>an IDE interface backwards...
> > It seems to me that more and more people are trying to use CF cards as
> > hard drive solutions for embedded systems and even for their
> > computers.  This has got to be the business to get into?  :)  Think
> > about it, they've designed a card that really shouldn't be any
> > different than a memory stick in what they do (store memory and read
> > it), but for some reason the CF's have a dying day somewhere in the
> > future, sooner or later, depending on your use.
>I believe the limited writes are a feature of all flash memory, not just
>those packaged in the CF format.  It should hold true of USB memory
>sticks as well, it's just that CF has an IDE-compatible interface and
>command set, so it is much easier to use in place of a hard drive, in
>scenarios where it is likely to get abused.
> > They know very well that people are trying to use them as hard drives
> > on various systems, and that unless it's an embedded solution like
> > Windows has done with a version of CE to limit the # of commits to the
> > card, it's a dead card the day you buy it.  I don't think they're
> > worth messing with.
> >
>For what you're trying to do (run an OS with virtual memory) you might
>be better off using a Microdrive instead.  These have been made by (at
>least) IBM, Hitachi, and Seagate.  They are tiny hard drives in the same
>form factor and interface as a CF card.  They are a little thicker, so
>make sure your card slot can accept a type II card.  Otherwise, they
>plug right in.  Also, they take a little more power than a CF card, but
>on your IA that shouldn't be a problem.  Geeks.com has some refurb 4 and
>5 G Microdrives in stock for $10-$15:
>http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=377  Get one of those bad boys
>and you shouldn't have to worry about too many write cycles.
>
>JCE
> >
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>
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