USING an SD card for a Hard Drive

ThunderStick · 01-10-2008, 02:48 PM

I am considering removing my hard drive and simply replacing it with an SD card. the reason being is it will be much easier for me to update and make back ups of. Ebay has a lot of adapters for such uses and I am curious to how reliable they are and if this is a practical idea.
Will it slow down my computer alot?
Is it a stable solution?
Will they last longer than a hard drive?
Has anyone done this before?
THANK FOR YOU HELP

pokki · 01-10-2008, 02:52 PM

Any reason you want to use SD instead of CF?

jontz · 01-10-2008, 07:47 PM

Most SD cards are slower than a desktop hard drive (probably more like a slow laptop hard drive), and the really really cheap SD cards won't last as long as a hard drive either. Some people think that because they have no moving parts, they should last forever, but this isn't true.

If you really want to go ahead with this, I would do some research and buy the fastest card you can. Chances are it will also be the most reliable, and the most expensive. Don't cheap out here or you will not be a happy camper. A good SD card shouldn't cause stability problems either.

ThunderStick · 01-11-2008, 08:02 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by pokki

Any reason you want to use SD instead of CF?

SD cards are more readily available and are a lot more popular. Plus I dont really see an advantage with CF over SD. SD also has no moving parts, I believe CF does. No moving parts more than likely means beter stability especially in cold climates.

SFiorito · 01-11-2008, 09:30 AM

SD and CF are both flash drives (except MicroDrives). The advantage of CF is you can buy industrial drives which are meant to be used in "embedded" devices such as CarPCs. I would be careful with cheap eBay adapters since they may cause compatibility issues. Search the OS forums for more info on running XP off a flash drive.

pokki · 01-11-2008, 02:42 PM

Quote:

SD cards are more readily available and are a lot more popular. Plus I dont really see an advantage with CF over SD.

The benefit of compact flash is the pins can be made to directly match that of IDE, thus no processing is required when connecting a CF card to a PC.

That and you can get CF cards that do 40mb/sec at reasonable prices.

The followign site is a good place to start for solid state drive speeds:
http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/speed-cards.html

ThunderStick · 01-12-2008, 08:11 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by pokki

The benefit of compact flash is the pins can be made to directly Blah Blah Blah....

The followign site is a good place to start for solid state drive speeds:
http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/speed-cards.html

Thanks for the info, this is what I was hoping to get. I think I will go with the CF card instead. Makes more sense.