Re: Windows 2000 or XP on USB or CF?

[Kim Wall <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Phil Harris wrote:
> Is there any problem with windows doing writes to the "boot
drive" and the
> limited number of write cycles that CF cards have? I know you can
obviously
> disable virtual memory but obviously it would be best if it were
possible to
> write protect the boot device.

I've got a couple of machines using CF as system disks, albeit under Linux.

Disabling swap is of course the most useful thing you can do, and I have
so far found that, combined with some careful configuration to avoid
unnecessary disk activity, to be sufficient for machines that boot up
off the flash and then hardly touch the filesystem.

One common approach is to use RAM disks for things like /var and /tmp
(unix systems try to keep the files that are likely to be changed
frequently in one place, so you can optimise your use of
drives/partitions), and to write that back to flash at longish intervals
or on shutdown, if necessary.  I've no idea how you'd go about doing
that sort of thing under Windows, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

As I understand it, CF cards' internal logic distributes writes around
the memory, so as to prolong their usable life.  As such, using a larger
capacity card should make it last longer.

But in practical terms, given the current price of a couple of gig of
CF, it doesn't seem worth getting too worried about... if it wears
itself out in a couple of years, you should be able to get one that's
much larger for a fraction of the cost.


Kim.