Using EWF on regular WinXP

**knubile** · 11-27-2004, 02:29 PM

connect the laptop drive via a USB 2.0 adapter and I bet you're safe. They say you can unplug those anytime you want. So you could cut power any time you want. The adapter must be taking care of the drive somehow.
So CF card read only with all applications installed. Music, vids etc on removable usb 2.0 hard drive. Now you're system is invincible. In theory at least.

Only kink i can think of right now is the config files for your frontend. If you want Frodoplayer to remember the last song you were playing etc. that would have to be persisted somehow. EWF has an api to allow you to commit to the file system. Any front end would have to implement this to have it's config files updated. It would work though.
Oh man, i'm excited!

**SFiorito** · 11-27-2004, 02:36 PM

I read that SanDisk cards were the most compatible for use with IDE adaptors. Hopefully that's correct. We'll see in a few days I suppose.

What my plan is to have the OS and maybe the frontend on the CF card. Then keep all the data (music, videos, etc.) on the 2.5" USB drive. With windows there's a setting for external drives that I believe disables write caching so you can unplug the drive whenever you want (otherwise you have to make sure windows flushes the cache or you lose data). I don't imagine to be doing a lot of writing to my external drive so that's not an issue. As far as settings (like last file played, last position, etc.) hopefully most frontends let you configure that. I've been working on my own frontend so I'll be doing that. The EWF commit feature won't work with hibernate. You can run "ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable -live" which commits changes and disables EWF immediately, but then you can't enable it again until you reboot (which if you're resuming from hibrenation isn't going to happen). So make sure you keep these things in mind when you're planning on how to use EWF together with a CF card install. You don't want to hibernate every time you shutdown because you'll be doing lots of writes. Instead you'll hibernate just once and you don't want to rely on ewfmgr committing changes either (more writes again) because you'll then have to reboot to reenable EWF. You should only commit changes when you're updating OS settings or updating drivers, etc.

**Tidder** · 11-27-2004, 02:36 PM

Originally Posted by msb5150

YeahAnd that is the very problem why you would want to do a graceful...nevermind, I'm stupid, that's what the ewf is for, to protect everything...but still shuting down normally would allow you to provide a bit more protection for the harddrive when it locks its heads (or whatever it does) to keep from hitting the platters.

They automatically do this anyway, that is why you do not have to park your hard drive anymore before you shut down... (Who is old enough to remember this?!

)

It's all built into the hard drive.

**knubile** · 11-27-2004, 02:46 PM

SFiorito. Where did you order your CF card and IDE adapter from. I'm doing the exact same thing. I found the Sandisk CF card on ebay new for $65US.
I also found this CF adapter. I'm using the Travla C134 case. This adapter will fit right in the spot for the laptop drive.

Do you know if the direct mount CF adapter will fit on the eden boards?

**SFiorito** · 11-27-2004, 02:59 PM

Damn... I should've checked ebay for the CF card...

the IDE adaptor I got from acscontrol.com. I just got the regular adaptor and I'll have to mount it somehow to my IKEA keybox case. I don't have room on my MII for the direct plug in board.

**SWC** · 11-27-2004, 03:34 PM

Originally Posted by SFiorito

Damn... I should've checked ebay for the CF card...

the IDE adaptor I got from acscontrol.com. I just got the regular adaptor and I'll have to mount it somehow to my IKEA keybox case. I don't have room on my MII for the direct plug in board.

You may want to check your bios again I have the MII 12k and I could've sworn there was a setting for booting from the CF card. I can't swear to it but I am pretty sure there was.

edit: after a good search. Via says its possible with a special version of the bios, I guess my board has it. I will check it later and let you know what version it is.

Edit again: http://downloads.viaarena.com/WinCE/...ot%20v2.01.zip

That should work, I have not tested it so if it hoses your system don't blame me. but its from the official via site so it should work.

**SFiorito** · 11-27-2004, 03:40 PM

Really? I did look into it, but it from what I read it seemed rather flakey. Let me know man!!

*edit*: Yeah, there's actually a newer version 2.03, but it claims it works only with Linux and WinCE. I'll take a look at it again, but I don't know... it also says it works only with FAT or ext3 filesystems, but not NTFS so it won't work with WindowsXP.

**mp3oplecarrier** · 11-27-2004, 03:58 PM

Originally Posted by Tidder

They automatically do this anyway, that is why you do not have to park your hard drive anymore before you shut down... (Who is old enough to remember this?!

)

It's all built into the hard drive.

I remember SHIPTRAK...

(Damn I'm old!)

**Tidder** · 11-27-2004, 04:02 PM

Originally Posted by mp3oplecarrier

I remember SHIPTRAK...

(Damn I'm old!)

I'm only 21, but damn I love that old stuff...

I remember before shutting down my old dos PC, typin' the PARK command... waitin' a few, then the big switch on the screen moving from on to off. LoL

Those were the days...

**lopan** · 11-27-2004, 05:11 PM

Damn... I should've checked ebay for the CF card... the IDE adaptor I got from acscontrol.com. I just got the regular adaptor and I'll have to mount it somehow to my IKEA keybox case. I don't have room on my MII for the direct plug in board.

You guys need to be using froogle... these guys have the gig sandisk for 63 bucks (not that much cheaper then knubile) and the 2 gig for 130... Everything on ebay seems to be cheaper elsewhere, being that ebay is a breeding ground for dropshippers... Droppshippers pay more for the products they sell then a real wholesaler... yada yada yada... ebay is only good for used stuff anymore...