Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

2007-07-24 07:11:57

(Score:5, Interesting)

by MoxFulder (159829) on Monday July 23, @03:16PM (#19960025)

(http://www.toleressea.net/)

Why are flash hard drives SO EXPENSIVE? It's $300 for a 16gb 2.5" IDE drive [newegg.com] on Newegg!!!

On the other hand, a 16gb CompactFlash card is only $140 [newegg.com]. And the CompactFlash interface is electrically identical to IDE/PATA, so you can use a $5 mechanical adapter [ebay.com] to connect a CompactFlash card to your notebook's hard drive bay.

What am I missing here???

• I can make my own 16gb solid-state IDE disk for only $150 (and 32gb CF cards are coming out in a few months).
• Does the $300 Transcend solid-state disk include any additional caching features or other speed-up? (the web site doesn't say: http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp ?ModNo=164&SpNo=3&LangNo=0 [transcendusa.com])
• Are the 32gb disks anything more than just a little RAID0 chip with two 16gb CF cards attached?

Inquiring minds want to know. Maybe I can start selling cheapo 16gb solid state drives on eBay for $180 and make a killing :)

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

(Score:5, Informative)

by bflong (107195) on Monday July 23, @05:11PM (#19961715)

(http://bipolar.longbros.com/)

This is an issue I have recent and intimate knowledge of.

XP will *NOT* install on a standard CF card. Even with a CF/IDE converter, Windows sees the CF card as a "Removable Device" and will not install to it. Windows also will only ever see one partition on a removable device. It's also broken when trying to format an existing partition during install, and it corrupts itself when trying to expand it's C: partition when installing from a sysprep'ed disk image. The only way I was able to get it installed was to create a sysprep image the exact size that the finished install will be and write it directly to the flash drive. It's kind of funny to double click on "My Computer" and see the C: drive show up as a removable device with a little removable type icon. This guys blog details the issues a bit more:

bedded-gotchas.html [blogspot.com]

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

o 2 replies beneath your current threshold.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

(Score:5, Informative)

by MoxFulder (159829) on Monday July 23, @03:36PM (#19960305)

(http://www.toleressea.net/)

make sure your cf-ide adapter supports dma transfers.

The CF-IDE adapter is simply a passive mechanical adapter... nothing more than a connector between the pins of the CF card and the pins of the IDE header.

However, you bring up a good point: if the CF card doesn't support DMA, it will be quite slow. The one I linked to apparently doesn't support DMA [newegg.com] :-( Anyone know what the prices are like for 16gb CF cards that do support UDMA mode 4? An 8gb CF card supporting DMA costs $110 [newegg.com]... and it is made by Transcend. It sounds like they may be the leading maker of CF cards that support DMA.

Hopefully other manufacturers will catch up quick, since DMA capabilities don't depend on the raw NAND flash chips, only on the controller chip... so the cost to manufacture a CF card supporting DMA should barely increase.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

o

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

(Score:5, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23, @03:43PM (#19960393)

many of the cf-ide adapters do not have 2 pins connected on either end (I forget which pins they are, but I had to solder them in on a cheap adapter to get our transcends to work effectively. we ended up buying addonics adapters http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_read er/ad44midecf.asp [addonics.com]

because they support dma.