For you Speed Booters

[kizer]

Well I've been tinkering around with the idea of a PC in my Jeep and well I've bought one and I couldn't belive guys where getting 12second boot up times. Looks like they are using Compact Flash cards.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/winnt-based/94584-latest-instructions-xp-ewf-cf-please.html

[Woody]

Kizer,

I just bought a 4gb solid state drive and micro power supply (http://www.logicsupply.com/), the drive plugs directly into the IDE connector and is about an inch tall, the power supply is about the same size (using wall brick transformer).  I am in the process of loading OS and support files and will see what is left for some music. It should boot lightning fast and be more reliable as well as use minimal space and power. I am putting this in a very small case 2.5"H x 12" W x 10"D  with micro-atx mb and no hard drive, I will access my library via network. This seems to be where things are heading espically for automotive applications using the ITX form factor and USB drives for music libraries. I will report back my experience with this setup.

Woody     

[kizer]

The only thing Ive been gleeming from that thread and others like it is you do not want to use it as a write to often device. Something about disabling the swap file and do writes to a seperate device and only use the Compact Flash as a boot device because multiple writes begin to burn out the device.

Im no expert or anything, but it sounded pretty cool. I currently have a Sata 100gig in my MiniITX machine thats on its way into my Jeep, but I'd be really interested to try that trick later if/when I can.

Currently my machine boots up in around 30seconds or maybe a little faster being a 2ghz machine and running a very lean version of XP. I couldn't imagine if it was all off a Compact Flash card how lightning fast it would be.

They did say something about not recommending this idea for desktop machines. I dont know why nor got really deep into it.

[Barcrest]

If you set up windows on a solid state device it will not last long due to the ammount of writes taking place. You might want to look at something like Barts PE where you can make a bootable CD and all the writing takes place in a different location. It would not take much to put that envronment on a solid state drive. As it's designed for a CD then it will not write to that drive at all.

That should give you fast booting without destroying the device. To be honest i didn't think the solid state drivers were faster than normal HD's. My USB drive is considerably slower than any of my HD's...

[Woody]

Barry

From what I gather the greater speed of the device is attributed to the interface at the IDE level and recent innovations in nand flash tech. If you look at the specs in this device it has a block leveling algorithm that spreads the read/wright pattern across media surface to minimize same sector wrights and boasts 4 million R\W cycles.


I am planning to load my slipstreamed Win XP that is a little over 2gB and setting paging file to zero on my system with 500mb memory and with FreeBox as the sole application on stand alone media pc.

I know there are other files besides the paging file that get written to and I was thinking about increasing the system memory and setting up a ramdrive there to handle those. Data that might get lost on power off  won't matter because the system would boot to the pre-determined state as stored in flash.

My main goal is to build a very small, very fast, and low power stand alone jukebox accessing media from a mapped network drive.

Any thoughts ? 
Any suggestions welcome.     

woody

[Barcrest]

I like the sound of it, what sort of price are you thinking this will all run at? I'm only asking as i might be interested in building something like this myself.

[kizer]

Well from hanging out over on that forum. They where talking about an IDE to Compact flash adapter and a good quality Compact flash card.

Use a second drive setup on IDE channel 2 for all the file writing and leaves IDE channel 1 setup as boot only like mentioned with no page file.

Cant be that much. Im sure there might be some need for good quality hardware to support the setup.