The $99 dollar SSD has arrived

[halfmanhalfamazing]

*EDIT* Pics up now. http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/tweakit/index.html

*EDIT2* New benchmarks. http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7988

I just got this thing up and running, and I'm very excited. I'll try to be as thorough as possible, so expect a long read. This won't read like a standard review, but more of observations I've come across, as well as the benefits I've got for my own personal reasons.

Sandisk Extreme 4
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1189)-SanDisk_Extreme_IV_CompactFlash.aspx

Yes, that's right. Compact flash. I'm not sure if most people realize, but compact flash cards are native ATA/IDE devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_flash

I got my CF/IDE adapter here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822998002

And the card itself here:
http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product_Id=4167633&JRSource=googlebase.datafeed.SAD+SDCFX440969

Now, the Sandisk Extreme 4 card is a special CF card in one particular reason. This card supports ATA/66 natively, with expected transfers of 40MB/s. That's fast. Lexar also has a UDMA enabled card; the only two I'm aware of on the market currently. (compact flash 3.0 spec)

I'm currently running SuSE 10.2, and the first thing that's immediately noticable is the massive increase in boot speed. My boot speed was well over 2 minutes on a hard drive, that includes auto login of user to KDE. Using this compact flash drive it's around 50 seconds.(neither time includes BIOS times, this is from bootloader to usable desktop)

Other things I've noticed is YAST performance.(for those who are familiar with SuSE) It opens up within 2-3 or so seconds, on the hard drive it was around 8-10. Other applications also are notably faster.

I've also noticed an increase in web browsing speed. I don't have a particularly high speed connection to the net, it's 768k down, 128k up. But just browsing through webpages has also become faster.

I'm thinking that the hard drive was actually bottlenecking web browsing, as surprising as that is or not. But it makes sense, most webpages are made up by hundreds of tiny little files, the millisecond access times of a hard drive just can't keep up. I'd love to try web browsing on this thing with a 10MB connection, I'd bet it'd be instant as if the page were actually on my computer. But right now, it's pretty close. Most pages come up very similarly to the google page. Even pages that have a fairly high amount of content such as apple or redhat.com are noticably faster.

If you clicked the link, you've already become aware that my drive is 4GB in size. But I run linux, so who the heck cares? I've still got about 2GB of usable space after OS install, and I have a spare hard drive that's for etc data only.(be it music, games, or anything else) There's also an 8GB version of this card, and I expect larger sizes in the future.

For any windows users who may come across this, I have bad news for you, I don't think this will work for you. I couldn't even boot windows with this thing hooked up to my IDE port. I'd like to know how a Mac would handle this, but I personally find both win/mac to be extremely bossy...... So I doubt that the mac would handle it any differently.

But how about the BSDs? Solaris? And any other OS out there? I'd like to see some people try this and post their results if any wish to try this out.

I bought this mainly for performance reasons, but I also like how it does not generate any heat at all. And it uses next to no power. It's also noiseless.

This would be especially useful for you linux/laptop users. And I have seen CF/IDE adapters which are aimed at the laptop space which have two CF ports on it. Which means two drives for you, possibly adequate space for average day to day usage as you fly around the country.

Now, in order to get this working properly, I had to pass a kernel option at bootloader time, otherwise it wouldn't completely boot. That being "IDE=NODMA".

I have no clue why I had to do this, but I imagine that because this isn't a traditional drive, Sandisk had to make their DMA controller somewhat different. Hopefully someone will get in touch with them and update some drivers accordingly. I think there's still some potential left in this thing for more performance, more room to grow. I've also had a chance to play with an Extreme 3 card on suse 10.2, and the boot speed difference is about 5 seconds. The thing to consider here is that most motherboards do not support PIO modes 5 and 6, which is how Sandisk got 20MB/s out of the EX3 cards. So going from the EX3 to the EX4 card I didn't see a huge difference. I know for certain that my own motherboard doesn't support PIO 5 and 6, my bios tells me so. So I was limited to 10MB/s transfers, and still only got a 5 second increase. Like I said, I think there's room to grow here.

So any questions, comments on this? I know there's *ALOT* of people who have been looking forward to SSDs in their computers that are not dynamic. I've looked at rocketdrives and qikdrives, but using DRAM doesn't work well if there's a power outtage and you lose all your data.

Behold....... the power of linux. :-)

*EDIT* For those wondering, here are my main system specs.

Duron 1ghz, FSB O/C'd to 333
512MB Geil PC 433
ATi FireGL 8800
Abit NF7-S
Lian Li PC 70(yes, full tower)
And my flash drive. :-D

And please don't ask why I still run a Duron. I had a personal matter that demanded my barton. I'll be getting another one from Ebay shortly.

[Michael]

What's the read results with it? (hdparm -t /dev/sda a few times)

Also, just to point out, there are a few motherboards on the market that also have a Compact Flash slot built into the motherboard; Tyan has a couple micro/flex ATX solutions.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

What's the read results with it? (hdparm -t /dev/sda a few times)

Hmmm............

Well, something is definately amiss here. I doubt people are going to believe me when I say that everything just feels faster after upgrading once I post these numbers.

(none):~ # hdparm -t /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
Timing buffered disk reads: 20 MB in 3.18 seconds = 6.29 MB/sec
(none):~ # hdparm -t /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
Timing buffered disk reads: 20 MB in 3.25 seconds = 6.16 MB/sec
(none):~ # hdparm -t /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
Timing buffered disk reads: 20 MB in 3.18 seconds = 6.28 MB/sec

I'm wondering what the issue is here.

Even with these relatively low numbers, access times make a huge difference. Milliseconds vs nanoseconds.

[glussier]

Can you post the result of the following command?

/sbin/hdparm -i /dev/hdc

[Svartalf]

Aaahh... The fun of benchmarking things.

What precisely are you measuring when you set up a metric? Michael's got a fun job of trying to come up with things that actually have meaning when he does his performance comparisons (Which, by the way, keep doing the great work you have been doing in that space... :D).

In the case of disk performance, data throughput speed IS important, but it's only a piece of the puzzle.

What good is it if your disk has a transfer rate of 133 megabytes per second, if your disk is only capable of handing it to the cache at 20 megabytes per second? If it's in cache it'll hand it to the bus in question at the signalling rate; if not, it'll be delayed by the seek and rotation latency of the disk and then transferred to the cache and then to the bus- milliseconds later.

With a flash disk, there's only microseconds worth of latency ever. For large streaming files, it's a little better to have the high throughput because you're not paying as much for the seek latencies unless the disk is badly fragmented up. For a bunch of smallish files or a lot of random lookups, the flash disk may win over any normal disk you can lay your hands on- because of latencies.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Can you post the result of the following command?

/sbin/hdparm -i /dev/hdc

Yes Sir.

# /sbin/hdparm -i /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:

Model=SanDisk SDCFX-4096, FwRev=HDX 4.04, SerialNo=012222C1207Q0359
Config={ HardSect NotMFM Removeable DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=7964/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=576, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPort, BuffSize=1kB, MaxMultSect=4, MultSect=4
CurCHS=7964/16/63, CurSects=8027712, LBA=yes, LBAsects=8027712
IORDY=no, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4 udma3 *udma4
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=disabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-4

* signifies the current active mode

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Aaahh... The fun of benchmarking things.

What precisely are you measuring when you set up a metric?

Nothing really, specifically. I'm just replying back to a request from another poster. The only thing it really serves to me personally is to show that something isn't quite correct. I have a feeling that it's driver related, I don't see what else it could be.

Michael's got a fun job of trying to come up with things that actually have meaning when he does his performance comparisons (Which, by the way, keep doing the great work you have been doing in that space... :D).

Agreed. I'd like to see a professional Phoronix review on this at some point in the future. I emailed Sandisk about this, not sure what kind of reply I'll get though. But I'm sure that an email from a review site with information requests will carry a little more weight than just some guy who does so. But we'll see. I'll post their reply when it comes through.

In the case of disk performance, data throughput speed IS important, but it's only a piece of the puzzle.

Agreed. I knew going into all of this that access times were going to be a net benefit, but it wasn't until I saw the transfer rate numbers that I realized just how much of a difference that access times truely mean.

[glussier]

Yes Sir.

# /sbin/hdparm -i /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:

Model=SanDisk SDCFX-4096, FwRev=HDX 4.04, SerialNo=012222C1207Q0359
Config={ HardSect NotMFM Removeable DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=7964/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=576, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPort, BuffSize=1kB, MaxMultSect=4, MultSect=4
CurCHS=7964/16/63, CurSects=8027712, LBA=yes, LBAsects=8027712
IORDY=no, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4 udma3 *udma4
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=disabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-4

* signifies the current active mode

Ther's actually UDMA mode 3 activated for that card, which means a maximum transfer speed of 44mB/sec. When you load an application or boot your computer, you are actually loading multiple files, so what is most important is not the transfer speed as such but the latency. With the memory card, it doesn't matter where the files are stored, the latency is pretty much the same, no matter where the files are stored on it, with a hard drive, the controller has to mode the reading/writing heads, which takes a lot of time.

[Svartalf]

Agreed. I knew going into all of this that access times were going to be a net benefit, but it wasn't until I saw the transfer rate numbers that I realized just how much of a difference that access times truely mean.

People only see bandwidth- they rarely think in terms of latency. Part of it is due to everyone harping on the bandwidth numbers. A Hummer full of 500Gb SATA HD's has more bandwidth than pretty much any pipe we can concieve of. The problem lies in the latency of the transfers with it. If you're trying to push hundreds of terabytes, it makes complete sense to do it that way because it'll be waaay faster- whether it's across town or across the country because the overall bandwidth exceeds any pipe you can field otherwise. Now, try moving just a CD's worth of data across the country that way. The latency makes it much less worthwhile because all that bandwidth is being left lying on the floor, unused. The same goes for things like disk interfaces, LAN cards, WAN interfaces, etc.

Unfortunately, much of our disk accesses on most machines are more like the CD than the multi-terabyte transfer in the above analogy. That's why "counterintiuitive" things happen like that "low" speed flash disk either over USB or over PATA/SATA seeming to be a LOT faster than the "fast" SATA disk drives we have nowadays. :D

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Ther's actually UDMA mode 3 activated for that card, which means a maximum transfer speed of 44mB/sec. When you load an application or boot your computer, you are actually loading multiple files, so what is most important is not the transfer speed as such but the latency. With the memory card, it doesn't matter where the files are stored, the latency is pretty much the same, no matter where the files are stored on it, with a hard drive, the controller has to mode the reading/writing heads, which takes a lot of time.

Alright. That does make sense. So while I've got a maximum of 44mb, my actual is going to equate to 6? I'd think that it'd be somewhere higher than that, but sure. I can understand the bandwidth/latency equasion too. Somewhat.

But there's still that issue of having to pass off the IDE=NODMA command at bootloader time.

If I don't do that, the system hangs and I get DMA timeouts. It'll eventually boot, but I could cook dinner in the amount of time that passes by.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

# hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
Timing cached reads: 788 MB in 2.00 seconds = 393.17 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 20 MB in 3.10 seconds = 6.45 MB/sec

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Just as a reference point, here's what I'm expecting from this extreme IV card.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7896-8475

Most benchmarks put it in the 30MB+/- range, but at the bare minimum it should be 20MB+/-.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

This is the Extreme III card:

/sbin/hdparm -i /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:

Model=SanDisk SDCFX3-4096, FwRev=HDX 4.08, SerialNo=116918E2707D4818
Config={ HardSect NotMFM Removeable DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=7964/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=576, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPort, BuffSize=1kB, MaxMultSect=4, MultSect=4
CurCHS=7964/16/63, CurSects=8027712, LBA=yes, LBAsects=8027712
IORDY=no, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 *mdma2
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=disabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-4

* signifies the current active mode

[halfmanhalfamazing]

This is the Extreme 3 card:

/sbin/hdparm -i /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:

Model=SanDisk SDCFX3-4096, FwRev=HDX 4.08, SerialNo=116918E2707D4818
Config={ HardSect NotMFM Removeable DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=7964/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=576, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPort, BuffSize=1kB, MaxMultSect=4, MultSect=4
CurCHS=7964/16/63, CurSects=8027712, LBA=yes, LBAsects=8027712
IORDY=no, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 *mdma2
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=disabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-4

* signifies the current active mode

Hmmmm............ sometimes the answer can be had just by comparing results.

I noticed this line:

Config={ HardSect NotMFM Removeable DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }

Also appears in the results for the Extreme IV card. Not being a dev myself, I can only take a stab in the dark on this, but perhaps my system/driver is accurately ID'ing this thing as what it really is........ a removable media/card and bottlenecking me at 10MB/s?

I ran this on the EX3 card:

# hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
Timing cached reads: 788 MB in 2.00 seconds = 393.73 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 20 MB in 3.16 seconds = 6.33 MB/sec

I'd bet that's what it is. Wherever that configuration is set at, that's the problem. May not even be driver related; just some text/config file somewhere that's doing it.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Finally got them up on a site. I can't hotlink them here, Angelfire sucks like that. I created the most basic of basic pages for display pursposes here:

http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/tweakit/index.html

[glussier]

Thanks for the pictures.

You know, you can upload pictures at http://imageshack.us/

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Thanks for the pictures.

You know, you can upload pictures at http://imageshack.us/

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been watching my bandwidth usage over the past few days though, I was thinking that a GB wasn't going to be very much in terms of image hosting, I've got way more left than I originally thought I'd have.

[colo]

Are there CF-to-SATA(-II)-adapters available as well? Would love to have one of those in my upcoming X61s.

[Svartalf]

Are there CF-to-SATA(-II)-adapters available as well? Would love to have one of those in my upcoming X61s.

YES.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/18/accelerated_compact_flash/
http://shopper.cnet.com/flash-memory-adapters/startech-com-compact-flash/4014-8898_9-32510515.html

I'm eying one for myself to some of the same sorts of cute tricks with more modern machines.

[bexamous]

You sure that IDE-CF adapter works? I got some off ebay that suck.

Not all converters support DMA: http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/5/24/46

Find one that works with DMA and performance will probably be better.

[bexamous]

(Wtf I just replied and its not showing up?)

You sure that IDE-CF adapter works? I got some off ebay that suck.

Not all converters support DMA: http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/5/24/46

Find one that works with DMA and performance will probably be better.

This is also why M0n0wall disables DMA by default, too many problems with CF cards when the kernel tries to use DMA.

[humpty]

I had no problems with a $5 converter and DamnSmallLinux;
http://petepr.hopto.org/cf/cf_cards.html

[halfmanhalfamazing]

You sure that IDE-CF adapter works? I got some off ebay that suck.

Not all converters support DMA: http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/5/24/46

Find one that works with DMA and performance will probably be better.

Interesting piece of information. Thanks for sharing.

I wish there were an easier way to test that out without having to do some soldering.(or at least, that's how I read it, that's the fix)

[halfmanhalfamazing]

I had no problems with a $5 converter and DamnSmallLinux;
http://petepr.hopto.org/cf/cf_cards.html

I'm gonna be giving DSL a try here soon. I saw the new release of Sabayon, gonna try that out as well.

Where did you buy your CF converter from? Can you point me to the webstore? I'd like to try one of the ones you have considering you've verified higher transfer rates than 6.5MB, and they're dirt cheap anyways. :-P If at all possible, I'd like to rule out the converter itself as the reason why I'm not getting the transfer rates that I should be getting.

I especially like that female one for the fact that it looks like it would just plug in directly into the motherboard, I wouldn't have to worry about the IDE cable and mounting issues.(see my pics for reference)

[Michael]

It looks like we will be doing a comparison with a CF converter at Phoronix shortly. Just waiting on the CF card(s) to arrive.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

A couple of things worthy of note. I've had several people ask me in various places if I'm worried about the lifespan of my new device.

Not really:

http://www.embeddedstar.com/weblog/2007/05/21/ssd-longevity/

Add to that AMD's new technology, hyperflash. Using a Flash/NAND device as a cache buffer.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/inside-amds-next-generation-mobile-architecture-griffin-and-puma.ars
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hyperflash+AMD+storage

[Syzygies]

This is a beautiful thread.

The Intel Desktop Board D201GLY is a powerful, almost complete
computer for $70, aimed at Intel's "next billion customers."

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D201GLY/index.htm

As others have also noted on the web, it cries out to have dozens
assembled into a cheap supercomputer, e.g. a Linux Beowulf cluster.
Just need memory and a drive, per board, supply them all power, and
network them through a switch.

I was thinking USB pen drives, till I found this thread.

On the other hand, USB pen drives would save on the conversion
hardware, and wouldn't matter after booting if one then used a RAM
disk.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

I was thinking USB pen drives, till I found this thread.

On the other hand, USB pen drives would save on the conversion
hardware, and wouldn't matter after booting if one then used a RAM
disk.

You're in a whole different territory than I am.

If you're running a cluster, then they would all be a slave to the primary computer, correct?

You'd only need a high performance setup on the primary computer.

I'd probably just go with pendrives, you can get them for 10 dollars each(256mb) off of pricewatch.

Glad I could offer you a possible alternative though. :-)

[Syzygies]

It looks like we will be doing a comparison with a CF converter at Phoronix shortly. Just waiting on the CF card(s) to arrive.

I'm hoping that CF can improve Linux memory swapping perfomance.

Here are some links re: DMA support:

IDE Compact Flash Adapter with Mounting Plate
http://www.acscontrol.com/Index_ACS.asp?Page=/Pages/Products/CompactFlash/IDE_To_CF_Adapter.htm

Which Compact FLASH cards support DMA?
http://www.acscontrol.com/Index_ACS.asp?Page=/Pages/Products/CompactFlash/IDE_To_CF_Adapter.htm

[Kano]

With a new pc with usb boot support you can directly use USB sticks for linux. Little ones with 1/2 GB are enough to run a Linux livesystem (compressed), bigger ones can hold even a hd install. The install onto usb is a bit tricky, but possible. The sticks that work have usually a 512 byte sector size, one 2 GB stick I have got has 2048 sector size - that does not work. There is a simple check for it:

blockdev --getss /dev/XXX

Older pc can be used to boot from a cd with kernel/initrd stored on it and root fs on usb. And there are much faster usb sticks than 6 mb/s...

[halfmanhalfamazing]

I found this:

http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/linux-ide@vger.kernel.org/6818048.html

in one of the postings it suggests that an IDE cable being too long may affect performance. I'll have to get my hands on a female CF/IDE adapter that will allow me to eliminate that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822998003

He's using the same card as I am and getting much higher transfers. I'll have to snatch an intel based system and give this a try..............

[paulsiu]

I am no expert, but I think the problem you may be encountering is that most compact flash do not support UDMA in fixed disk mode.

A compact flash has 3 different modes: I/O, Memory, and True IDE. The last mode is the one that makes a Compact Flash appear to be an IDE fixed disk.

The problem is that the standard states that a CF card must have an True-IDE mode, but it does not state that it will support UDMA in True-IDE. So your extreme card is fast in other modes, but bottlenecked by running in PIO mode when it is simulating a hard disk.

Unfortunately, vendors like Addronics don't seemed to do a good enough job of specifying which device will work in UDMA Fixed Disk mode. So far, the only card I think will work are Industry Compact Flash that states they support UDMA Fixed Disk mode. One such card would be Transcend Industrial CompactFlash, but I don't think there is a 266x or 300x version. In any case, this is just a guess on why you can't go into DMA mode.

[Thetargos]

What are the hdparm -Tt results?

Currently for one of my ATA disks it is:


hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 938 MB in 2.00 seconds = 468.36 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 116 MB in 3.01 seconds = 38.51 MB/sec
And it is a Seagate 80Gigs drive:


hdparm -i /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

Model=ST380023A , FwRev=3.33 , SerialNo=3KB125H9
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=?16?
CurCHS=4047/16/255, CurSects=16511760, LBA=yes, LBAsects=156301488
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 udma3 udma4 *udma5
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2: ATA/ATAPI-1 ATA/ATAPI-2 ATA/ATAPI-3 ATA/ATAPI-4 ATA/ATAPI-5 ATA/ATAPI-6

For an ATA-100 drive in UDMA5 mode, I've always thought it was pretty slow... Compared to my other 80Gig S-ATA Seagate:

hdparm -i /dev/sdd

/dev/sdd:

Model=ST3808110AS , FwRev=3.AAH , SerialNo= 5LR4A3D2
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=?16?
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=156301488
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-1 ATA/ATAPI-2 ATA/ATAPI-3 ATA/ATAPI-4 ATA/ATAPI-5 ATA/ATAPI-6 ATA/ATAPI-7

hdparm -tT /dev/sdd

/dev/sdd:
Timing cached reads: 986 MB in 2.00 seconds = 492.35 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 204 MB in 3.01 seconds = 67.85 MB/sec

But from what I can make out of these tests you've run, it would seem that CF has a clear advantage when it comes to overall latency.

[joshuapurcell]

Here is the same command output ran on my old Thinkpad T40:joshua@laptop:~/work/wrigley$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 1644 MB in 2.00 seconds = 822.06 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 96 MB in 3.04 seconds = 31.61 MB/sec
joshua@laptop:~/work/wrigley$ sudo hdparm -i /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

Model=HTS421280H9AT00, FwRev=HA3IA70S, SerialNo=HKA371AKC8BM6M
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=7528kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=156301488
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
AdvancedPM=yes: mode=0x80 (128) WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1: ATA/ATAPI-2 ATA/ATAPI-3 ATA/ATAPI-4 ATA/ATAPI-5 ATA/ATAPI-6 ATA/ATAPI-7The drive is nothing special... I believe it's a 4200RPM 60GB drive, which is the default that came with the laptop.

[Thetargos]

It has some nice buffered reads numbers.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

I am no expert, but I think the problem you may be encountering is that most compact flash do not support UDMA in fixed disk mode.

A compact flash has 3 different modes: I/O, Memory, and True IDE. The last mode is the one that makes a Compact Flash appear to be an IDE fixed disk.

The problem is that the standard states that a CF card must have an True-IDE mode, but it does not state that it will support UDMA in True-IDE. So your extreme card is fast in other modes, but bottlenecked by running in PIO mode when it is simulating a hard disk.

Unfortunately, vendors like Addronics don't seemed to do a good enough job of specifying which device will work in UDMA Fixed Disk mode. So far, the only card I think will work are Industry Compact Flash that states they support UDMA Fixed Disk mode. One such card would be Transcend Industrial CompactFlash, but I don't think there is a 266x or 300x version. In any case, this is just a guess on why you can't go into DMA mode.

Thank you for your reply, I had read a little bit about the three modes of compact flash drives but you laid it out nicely.

I'm pretty sure that that's not directly the problem though. I've tried many distros at this point, and most will not recognize the card at all, some see it and lock up. Suse is one of the few that I've used in the past few months that works properly, albeit with slower transfers than I should be getting. I've been testing out the suse 10.3 betas, I'm pretty sure that my issues are all driver related. It wasn't until beta 2 that YAST would load up properly, and only one of the available 5 ide drivers at boot time would work properly.

As I've posted previously, HDPARM does report this as supporting UDMA mode 3.(I think. it might have been 4)

As far as the adapter I'm using, there's nothing to it. All it is, is essentially a series of short wires that allow the CF to plug into the IDE cable. There's no bridge chips or anything, meaning that there's a direct connection from my IDE motherboard adapter to the CF card. The adapter doesn't technically 'support' anything any more than a standard IDE cable does. It's just wires.

Some of the CF adapters out there do have bridge chips, as they connect to serial ATA.

I think that most of my issues are primarily driver related, and I think that it revolves around those three modes of compact flash. I've been trying to get ahold of an intel based system to do some testing with to see if that makes any difference. One of the links I recently posted, a guy has the same card as me and is getting much higher transfers.

And of course Michael said that a phoronix review is coming at some point, still waiting for that too.

[paulsiu]

It may be a driver issue, but I was under the impression that most of the distro pretty much use the same set of code.

In the case of the compact flash, it's just emulating an IDE controller, so one would assume tht the device would look just like a drive to the OS. Have you talk with the vendor to see what they recommend?

Have you try to do this under a different OS like Windows or BSD?

Paul

[halfmanhalfamazing]

It may be a driver issue, but I was under the impression that most of the distro pretty much use the same set of code.

In the case of the compact flash, it's just emulating an IDE controller, so one would assume tht the device would look just like a drive to the OS. Have you talk with the vendor to see what they recommend?

Have you try to do this under a different OS like Windows or BSD?

Paul

I only own a copy of windows 2000 but with the compact flash card plugged into my ide win2k wouldn't boot. I brought out an old HD and installed w2k, just having it plugged in after the OS is installed freaks it out. Starting off of the CD gives the same result. It did the same thing when I had the extreme 3 card, which does not support UDMA.

Yes, I emailed Sandisk for any information they could provide but all i got was crickets.

I honestly never even thought of giving BSD a try. I'll do that when I get a chance.

[Kano]

Why don't you use usb? Much faster than your old ide interface and with a good bios no problem to boot.

[paulsiu]

Why don't you use usb? Much faster than your old ide interface and with a good bios no problem to boot.

Now, why would you say that? When I use a USB drive, the speed has always been slower than the internal ide drive and uses more cpu utilization.

[Kano]

I never check CPU use with dual core ;) But I can tell you Kanotix runs good from USB sticks. There are even highspeed sticks out there with 30 mb/s, standard ones are about 10-15 mb/s.

[paulsiu]

I have tried Puppy Linux off a USB drive. It works well enough on a lot of the newer PC's, but the boot can be problematic.

I think the boot time is always a bit slow because initial loading of boot sectors are using usb 1.1 for maximum compatibility.

The BIOS is often at fault. Some pc will boot from a fat32, some only fat16. Some will boot only if the drive has a MBR, some will only boot when the drive is formatted like a floppy. Some will boot only on cold start, etc.

I also don't like to have an USB sticking out the side of the machine.

It would be nice to be able to boot from Compact flash or SD, but only a few laptops (mostly tablets) have that capability.

I would not use the flash for swap, it may burn out the card.

[Kano]

Well because of the more or less useless V Ready Boost feature you may even get USB sticks for direct motherboard connection. Why don't you try Kanotix on USB? Up to 2 GB you can run the "normal" live version - if you want with added packages and preloaded with 3d drivers. With 4 GB and more you can do a real hd install - in advanced mode when you change the hd0 grub entry to match the USB device. In both cases it uses full USB 2.0 speed to boot - just your device limits the speed. In case of installing 3d drivers in live mode using nvidia/fglrx cheatcodes these devices really work nice, because of the much lower seek time. The same is true for hd install from USB instead of a cd.

[DeepDayze]

YES.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/18/accelerated_compact_flash/
http://shopper.cnet.com/flash-memory-adapters/startech-com-compact-flash/4014-8898_9-32510515.html

I'm eying one for myself to some of the same sorts of cute tricks with more modern machines.


Let me know how the SATA version of the CF reader works compared to the IDE version. Perhaps I may make use of this as well in my own system for backup purposes

[humpty]

Well it's been more than a year now. I thought some might like to know
about an eSata USB pendrive I stumbled upon a few months back.

http://petepr.drivehq.com/tests/review_aolab.html

[ZoolChile]

Thanks for the pictures, rlly !