Re: [LIB] speed gain using flash card

[Philip Nienhuis]

Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:51:48 +0100
From: Philip Nienhuis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [LIB] speed gain using flash card

Hi John:

John wrote:
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:46:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: speed gain using flash card

Hello fellow members 

I am using a sandisk extreme II 8 gig compact flash as
a solid state hard drive in my Libretto 110CT and am
having twice the speed for read and writes as I was

Good idea

getting with a standard hard drive. The extreme III
and IV are opproximatly twice and three times as fast
as the II so if I would get another increase if I
upgraded to one of those. 

I am getting 4 MB as opposed to 1.5 to 2 with the hard
drive. I should expect 6 and 8MB with the extreme III
and IV.

AFAIK (based on a vague reminiscence and a google search) the 
theoretical maximum data transfer speed on an ISA bus is about 6 MB/s. 
As the Lib110's HD is attached through a 16 bit ISA connection (without 
DMA), that 6 MB/s is about all you'll get.
Or am I wrong here? (hopefully not, for your sake)

I am also using a second flash card for a virtual
memory drive but it is an old one so only gives hard
drive speeds. If I updated that with a newer one I
would think the increase in speed be noticalbe in swap
file use. 

How did you connect that 2nd one? thru the PCMCIA slot?
I remember I found an external -PCMCIA, or rather, Cardbus- HD to be 
clearly faster than the internal one (I had a 7200 rpm Hitachi inside). 
There was also a thread on this in the mailing list.

I notice a real reduction in temperature also using a
solid state drive. My libretto was always having to
slow down to cool off but it is very cool now when it
runs.

Anyway it all sounds like a bright idea to me.

Any idea about battery power savings using flash rather than rotating 
storage?

Sometimes I feel a bit sorry to have decommissioned my L110; it merely 
serves as a sort of book stand, right on top of a much older DEC 
450SLC/e notebook (with a 50 Mhz 486-DX2 inside - wow). Sometimes I 
start them up just for fun, like today when the clocks in my place 
"must" be reset to winter time.

BTW have you ever had any luck upgrading the RAM beyond 64 MB? (I 
remember you were busy with that). There were some guys who have fitted 
a Portege 64 MB module in the extension slot to get 96 MB; that was the 
max I've ever heard of w.r.t. Lib110.....

Best wishes,

Philip