mattress

Hey guys. I've been following the CarPC scene for quite a while (5+ years)...
I've gone through several different "revisions" of my project, but have never built a final product.. lol..

The last time I pulled the project out of the closet and dusted it off to tinker with, I followed a thread on how to boot off of an extreme III compact flash card -- and got all the hardware and everything.

Nowadays, USB thumb drives are getting cheaper and cheaper. I recently found a 4GB USB stick for about $25...

So now I'm curious. What are the pros and cons of booting off a USB drive?

I know the compact flash card has a limited write life, and you have to extensive software modification (EWF, HORM, etc) to make it work reliably. This is pretty much where I get stuck last time, and put the project back in the closet.

Are USB drives any slower or faster than an extreme III compact flash card? Do they have a limited write life? Are they reliable?

Thanks for all the info!

MP3Car.com

 

SFiorito

All flash has limited write cycles, so you'll need EWF on the USB stick as well. If you get the right USB stick it can be much faster than a typical consumer level CF card. SanDisk has much faster CF cards out now though.

The only problem with USB is that you need the right mobo (BIOS needs to support hi-speed USB booting), and the configuration isn't as simple as CF. Search the forums I've got some posts on USB booting. I've done it before with M-System's uDOC which was very fast and easy to set up because they have software support for it and I did it on a consumer high speed thumb drive.

ak47clown

I'd recommend doing some research. I know for a fact that Sandisk has some of the fastest CF cards available (their extreme IV series, I believe). You'll defintely pay more than $25 for it but I'm fairly certain that at memory stick like that is gonna be limited to about 8-10mb/s

MP3Car.com