Harddisk Upgrade/replacement? - [replaced!]

[markpmc]

I still occasionally have disk errors w/ my C3000. Can the disk in my Z be replaced/upgraded w/ a new 6 GB drive or a CF card?

Mark

[speculatrix]

yes. need to try a few more searches of this forum. there's even pictures.

[markpmc]

yes. need to try a few more searches of this forum. there's even pictures.
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sigh. thanks. you're correct.
i found 'em.

now i'm off to find one of those sandisk extreme 4 gb cards

but i was really hoping that trisoft or streamline offered the service.

markpmc

[DaemonsGR]

A pm to trisoft will answer your question

Tasos

[TRIsoft]

markpmc,

but i was really hoping that trisoft or streamline offered the service.

we will not offer to replace the microdrive with a CF card.
We tried it here with a SanDisk Ultra-II and the first card
lived less than one hour before it turned itself read-only...
Tried a second card and this was only running for 10 days.

Maybe we just got two bad cards in a row, but we were
also not impressed of the speed increase, so we don't see
the need to replace the harddisk with a flash memory.

But if your harddisk is faulty, there's no problem to replace
it with a new one.

///TRIsoft

Marc Stephan

[speculatrix]

But if your harddisk is faulty, there's no problem to replace
it with a new one.
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any sign of the newer 20GB microdrives becoming available? I think there's even bigger ones now, I think they're used in these digital camcorders as a replacement for miniDV.

[speculatrix]

But if your harddisk is faulty, there's no problem to replace
it with a new one.
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any sign of the newer 20GB microdrives becoming available? I think there's even bigger ones now, I think they're used in these digital camcorders as a replacement for miniDV.
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[a href=\"http://www.steves-digicams.com/microdrive.html]http://www.steves-digicams.com/microdrive.html[/url]

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?ContentId=4319

[markpmc]

markpmc,

but i was really hoping that trisoft or streamline offered the service.

we will not offer to replace the microdrive with a CF card.
We tried it here with a SanDisk Ultra-II and the first card
lived less than one hour before it turned itself read-only...
Tried a second card and this was only running for 10 days.

Maybe we just got two bad cards in a row, but we were
also not impressed of the speed increase, so we don't see
the need to replace the harddisk with a flash memory.

But if your harddisk is faulty, there's no problem to replace
it with a new one.

///TRIsoft

Marc Stephan
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Thanks Marc,

Maybe you've saved me some heart ache. I was actively searching for a 'deal' on a CF card. But you also made a valid point, I've never been unhappy w/ the the spin up time on my 3K. Guess I'll try a disk replacement.

Mark

[Da_Blitz]

one of the great things about flash has always been the latency issues, if you hammer the card with IO then it will performe much faster than a hard drik, same for bandwidth provided that the flash chips have been wired correcttly (funnilf enough it is posible to make a flash drive that does the 3gbps of sata 2 with current technolagy, just put those flash chips in parrellel)

microdrives have a maximum power consumption on spin up, so if you keep parking the heads then truning it back on you drain the battries quick (note to zsh users  it keeps flusing to disk every 5 secs so avoid it if you prak the drive heads or use laptop mode to save power)

i would say trisoft has had a bad experince, others have done it with great sucsess and if you know a bit about partioning and the cp -a command then you really should not have a problem

trisoft: did you have a swap file on the card, i have heard of some flash cards dying like that but sandisk has a good rep. also i have heard of really good fakes on ebay that are hard to tell apart

os to sum it all up, there is a slight power saving with cf, a tiny spped upgrade and a huge IO per second upgrade, if we used initng we would see an increse but for anything else perhaps not

if you listen to mp3s it might be a good option depending on your choice of media player and how aggresive the buffering is as well as how "hardcore" you have been with the power managment (ie did you do kernel parmater tweaking, hdparm stuff and enabled laptop mode)

i would say go for it  but then again you probbely didnt need my advice

[TRIsoft]

Hi Da_Blitz,

i would say trisoft has had a bad experince, others have done it with great sucsess and if you know a bit about partioning and the cp -a command then you really should not have a problem

trisoft: did you have a swap file on the card, i have heard of some flash cards dying like that but sandisk has a good rep. also i have heard of really good fakes on ebay that are hard to tell apart

we know, that some of you guys replaced the hd with a CF
card without problems. That was the reason, why we started
testing here.

We did this with a SL-C3000, running our localized SHARP Rom.
I'm sure, it was a case of bad coincidence, but we simply had
no fun in trying and killing a third card  
Also, with a SL-C3100/3200 that works most time in the flash
memory and uses the harddisk only for documents, the stress
for a CF card (or the disk) is much lower.

///TRIsoft

Marc Stephan

[speculatrix]

it might be safer too with cacko, whereby the hard drive is actually not used all that much except for bulk storage. if you DO need swap, use SD card as it's much more convenient to switch that out.

is it possible to use jffs or somethign designed for flash file storage rather than fat or ext2, to make the card last longer.

I think I too would be inclined to try it, provided I bought the card from a reputable place and it had a lifetime guarantee so's I could get a refund too.

If it worked well enough, then removing the cladding from the card, voiding the warranty of course, might free up enough space to allow fitting a wifi or bluetooth usb adaptor if small enough and also strippped down!

[Da_Blitz]

i havent done that upgrade just yet but if i can rebuild the fried charging circuit on my Z i might give it a go (wrong power connector)

good point about the swap on SD, after reading the tech sheets and running the numbers 100 000 rewrites to the same cell is quite alot really, it just depends on how hard you "hit" it

i think it really comes down to usage patterns, plus i dont think that anyone has really explored how low power we could make this thing. i would be intrested to see what type of battery life i get with a fully modded Z (software and hardware hacks, underclocking, laptop mode, MD replacment, more aggresive caching and prefetching. turing off uneeded stuff)

if i do fix my Z its not going back in its case, it will be a server or robotics controller so i might put a jack in there to allow me to mesure current consumption and run some tests.

[markpmc]

Marc,

Thanks again for your help. I found a deal on the Seagate 8GB "PhotoDrive". I installed it during halftime on Sunday will watching the Colts bring it home

No issues to report. I'm updating the title of the thread to make it easier for other to find.

Mark

[Fushnchupsh]

hey, I just wanted to give you soem happy words.  
My year old 3200's microdrive died so, I replaced it with a cf card.  It's been in for about a month with issues as of yet  

Now if I could find a good deal on something with mor capacity than 512MB......

--Fish

[Drake01]

hey, I just wanted to give you soem happy words. 
My year old 3200's microdrive died so, I replaced it with a cf card.  It's been in for about a month with issues as of yet  

Now if I could find a good deal on something with mor capacity than 512MB......

--Fish
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What do you consider a "good deal?"  I'm pretty sure I've seen 4GB CF cards for as low as US$35.