[bad_quote]

is it possible? 1 gig SD cards are downright cheap... would there be a way to hack a few of htem together to make a 4-10 gig 'hard drive' with no moving parts?

Basically, my ipod's HD died, and I don't want to shell out $100 on another one that might die in a few months.

[bad_quote]

Actually, if I purchased a PCMCIA to CF adaptor, could I just use a 2 gig CF card? Would it convert my ipod to no moving parts?

[shrugs*]

If you used SD, all the information would be lost whenever power is lost. There are PCI cards that run on certain types of RAM to create a ramdrive.. but I don't see how you plan on using that or CF on an ipod.

[bad_quote]

How? My SD card retains it's data when I pull it out of my digital camera. It requires zero power to maintain the data on the card. No offense, but you sound like you're talking about something you don't understand at all.

[brokenjago]

Shrugs, he means Secure Digital, not RAM.

Bad_quote: I have no idea. it's certainly something to try!

[cgc]

SD cards aren't very fast compared to an actual hard drive. Maybe if you set up an SD RAID you could get decent speeds.

[winterlandia]

you could use an sd card as a hd if you had some sort of IDE->sd converter

I have done this on pcs using compact flash cards using an IDE->CF (old big style)->CF (small) converters, it really does work.

the problem is that most of that sort of memory is slow and secondly, and more importantly, flash ram has a finite life of writes. It might work for a while but after the number of writes is exceeded on any flash device, it stops working.

There are some interesting workarounds for this as there are actual devices in existence that do use a combination of ram and flashram to avoid writing to the flash ram constantly. Windows XPe works this way-- normally it does not allow any writes to the flash ram 'hard drive' and allows writes to a normal ram drive. Of course when you turn off the machine it resets. BUT they build in a manual function that allows you to keep the state (maintain any changes) by 'allowing writes' on the flash ram part. So what ends up happening is every time you change a setting you want to keep, you 'dump the changes to the flash ram'. This way it minimizes the number of writes and prolongs the life of the flashram.

Perhaps these days flash ram is so cheap to replace or maybe some types allow more writes than in the past so you might see how it works if you can find an IDE-SD adapter-- I would suggest highly that you put the pagefile elsewhere.

[bad_quote]

.... so wait, ar eyou saying that after syncing a nano like 500 times it will just quit working?

[jasong]

It's more than 500, but yes, Flash media does have a finite life span. NAND memory, which is what the Nano has, has 100,000 - 300,000 erase cycles.

http://www.commsdesign.com/design_co...cleID=16502199

Of course now there will be a web site that proclaims the iPod Nano can only be plugged into your computer 500 times before it self destructs - assuming the screen doesn't shatter spontaneously before then.

[skilled2k1]

Originally Posted by jasong

It's more than 500, but yes, Flash media does have a finite life span. NAND memory, which is what the Nano has, has 100,000 - 300,000 erase cycles.

http://www.commsdesign.com/design_co...cleID=16502199

Of course now there will be a web site that proclaims the iPod Nano can only be plugged into your computer 500 times before it self destructs - assuming the screen doesn't shatter spontaneously before then.

In the Ipod Nanos case though its a less critical problem. Lets say you completed an erase cycle every hour on the hour. It would take 100,000 hours (min) for it to stop functioning. Now that translates into 11.4 years before it would stop functioning. Change the numbers around as you like and it still translates into a pretty long life span by any means, I think it bests most hard drives on their time till failure numbers.


(This wasnt the best comparison, and I could be wrong, so feel free to correct me )

[westrock]

With portable devices its OK, because you only write so often. However on a normal computer harddrive the computer is writing to the disc much more often (like cacheing). I suppose that if you only had the system files on a flash drive, and the scratch disc and all other used information was stored on a regular drive you could get away with it. As mentioned the CF drives have lower transfer speeds, but I thinks its more becuase of the PIO or whatever protocol they use...basically they use a simpler/older protocal that doesn't have high transfer rates. The upside is that they have zero spin-up time, very little power usage, and silent.


Also reading from a flash disc does not really affect its lifespan, only the writing part because of the state change of the gate. So once you put the music on Nano it wont affect it at all. Harddrives may be old school, but they sure do the job nicely

[bowwowman]

why is everyting repeated twice on that page you linked to ?