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Old 4th July 2008
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lvlamb lvlamb is offline
Real Name: Louis V. Lambrecht
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Join Date: May 2008
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jmj, I hear you

IMVHO, solutions for specific needs should be designed from the ground up.
A maribe PC has not the same needs than an embedded car GPS/play console, or airborne entertainment, or network applied storage.

For years I am lokking for available solutions to put the darn OS, networking, applications somewhere. The BIOS usually is a E2PROM. Slow in reading but it does not need to read much.
IMO, the rest should be fast access which is DRAM. That DRAM can be kept alive (battery backup to send a refresh signal when needed, technology is around for 30 years).
Problem: that DRAM must get the data from somewhere. Speaking of solid state, Flash is the winner.

I am speaking of installing, upgrading, expamding the range of apps on a Flash device, but loading all the flash data in a (battery backed up) DRAM device. This I don't see available anywhere.

Pardon me, but a SATA enable raid made of CF cards is what I call the B&D syndrom.

You can attach a circular-saw attachment on a B&W drille and hope to saw some feet off a plank, but you would get a proper job using a plain circular saw.

Marketing wise.
Unfortunately.
Yes, I fully agree that any IT person in charge should protect his company with a choice of hardware elements freely available at a trusted computer spares supplier next door.

I would use raided SATAized CFs to populate a RAM disk. But in this case, if mechanical data holders are acceptable, DVD-RW can be used both as data source and incremental backups (see man growisofs -Z and -M switches).

In both cases, I would use RAM disks. So, RW speed of the flash is a lesser concern as only used as incremental backup (as you would with the DVD-RW, I didn't said DVD+RW which is limited to 1000 sessions or so). In theory, reading is only neede when booting the station, writing only needed for incremental backup.
And .. , instead of the DVD, flash sticks also are a solution.
(Checked yesterday, now get 8Gig instead of 4Gig for the price 2 months ago).

No doubt SSD has a market (has markets).
Not, IMO, where power lines (and UPSes) are available in normal environments (no vibrations, normal room temparature).
Also, no doubt 4 to 8 Gigs will be soon soldered on SBC and mini|nano-itx.


Just FWIW, upgraded a OpenBSD snapshot from June 12th to the 4.4 beta on a flash stick yesterday. One slice holding all (incl. /tmp). Took 4 hours vs. a couple of minutes on the hard drive (am a slow typist).
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