because rotating hard disk are not immortals...
what about a IDE FLASH hard drive composed of many USB Keys?
does it exists?

My newer computer claims it will boot from a usb flash, so I'm guessing I could stich a whole bunch on a usb hub. There are also ide flash drives that don't have the bandwidth problems of usb and use other types of flash chips

USB flash is too slow to use as a harddrive, but flash memory is used for harddrives. Take a look at www.tomshardware.com and check out benchmark.

Summary: SSDs are extremely expensive, they have somewhat lower sustained transfer rates than normal harddrives, but a lot better "seek time". However, because of some latency in write operations, you need high-end SSDs to compete against normal harddrives for certain usage patterns.

yes!!
but no!
i don't speak about this

i speak about a DIY thing that translate USB flash drives on the IDE standard.

somthing like that:
(don't speak about the usb boot capability, it's not available on my computers )

Buy an USB hub, buy a bunch of pendrives, and set up a RAID volume spanning them. And good luck.

Building your own thing might be possible, but then it seems ludicrous to use USB pendrives when you should be able to get flash memory chips cheaper - it would simplify the design a lot.

anybody has an idea on how to make this?
wich components to use?
for the µC i think about a PIC, but wich PIC?

the harder work is to translate usb protocol into ide, and vice versa.
it must tbe transparent and need to work on all old computers.
the best is that this product permitts to compose yourself your hard drive.
the number of 5 slot is just an exemple.
with five 8Gb usb drives, you can obtain 40Gb drive.
expensive but shipest than the real flash drive.

4x "The cheapest" 8GB pendrives is only $100 cheaper than a dedicated 32gig SSD here in .dk. I wonder if those $100 can cover the rest of the gear you need to build a thing like this.

I'd rather have "the real deal" and avoid the overhead and complications of the USB solution.

I think you can't go anywhere with that, your options are FPGAs or an already done IC. As for the memory, buy some pens, remove the flash memory and grab the datasheets

PS: This is the memory that my pen has http://www.hynix.com/datasheet/eng/nand/details/large_11_HY27UF082G2M.jsp

You'd probably be better off with something like a compact flash->ide adapter such as the ones at http://www.pcengines.ch/cflash.htm

It'll (likely) be cheaper than anything you can build, and certainly easier to work with than trying to map multiple USB flash drives into a single solid-state "drive".

The cf->IDE adapters are nice, but pretty slow - I've seen DMA memory as a feature... imagine how much PIO mode slows down your entire system, regardless of the cf module speed...

But I'm considering it for my upcoming linux fileserver

yes yes yes....

the IDE to flash is a very good thing, really good...
but as it is slow, it sucks.

what about a DDR Flash Rom?
a SD Flash Rom, and a EDO Flash Rom

something to plug in the RAM slots.
can contain a bios and an OS.
the rest can be on hard drives, music, devellopement datas, mail, programms, and many other things.

simply find a very fast Flash Rom with the same pinout as the DDR, SDR and EDO chips.

how to install an OS on these? simple. very simple.
first, boot, bios takes control, load the boot loader, and boot loader launch operating system.
operating system then write the Flash Rom, set protection mechanism inherent to the ROM, for exemple, an I/O memory zone.
this I/O memory, the last byte for exemple, can be the protection register of the rom, linked to the R/W µControler
the bios is copied on the falsh rom.
the bios chiop is overwriten to directtly launch the Flash Rom bios execution.

by evidence, this kind of rom/ram will change all the current concept.
all the rom bar will be used for OS, if this ba is 256 Mbytes, it's a big amount of memory that is not writable.
if the First N Mbyte is ROM and the rest is ram, the problem is absent.
other problem appear, the real mode execution at boot up.
so, this flash ROM can be the last 32 or 16 Mbytes.



technology have infinite ways.
the babylon profits effect is a brake.

The problem is that the protocol was not developed in a way in which the memory module informs throught a pin that the I/O operation was completed. So the flash memory would be constrained to the speeds of the DDR memories, something not really achievable with flash memories.

I don't know if there is some chances by mapping a memory address range to a flash memory PCI card, perhaps the PCI protocol allows flexible read/write times but I doubt it very much. Of course it can be solved by writting a driver to have custom I/O protocol (sending a command and using a fast RAM on card as buffer), but that wouldn't be so direct like device memory mapping.

i'm idiot, i've forgot the possibility of a battery on the RAM bar.
something that recharge when PC is ON, and battery refresh the RAM witout POWER supply.

how many µAh for a ram refresh?
currently, very little batteries can contain a lot of energy.

some calculation will give us the maximum saving time.
the ram refresh circuitry is integrated in the bar? the little DIL8 chip in the corner?

Look, it's not the connection type (DDR socket vs. IDE/SATA connection) that's limiting the speed of flash drives, it's the memory type used. So trying to stuff flash memory in a DDR socket is just plain idiotic.

This is what you want. It's too bad it only supports SATA/150 and not SATA/300 (DDR memory speed is in the gigabytes rather than megabytes range), but that'll come with time... combine one of these puppies with a solid-state flashdrive for power-off storage, and you can't really be beat for speed.

Why not just get a old xbox and a mod chip, and boot your OS etc from the mod chip ?.

i have the xbox, but no mod chip, too expensive, even it's $1.

speaking about xbox, how to boot on a xbox?
i doubt it's org 7C00h!
there is no keyboard, so it's useless for developement on PC

There's quite a lot of research on the original xbox, google. And just because it has no keyboard in no way makes it useless for development... ever heard of cross-compiling?

Without a mod chip forget about it, with one you can use "cromwell" bios to load your image http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Cromwell_Manual#What_is_Cromwell.2FXromwell.3F
Also for info on programing for a modded xbox, see here:
http://www.xbdev.net/non_xdk/nasm_xbe/xbe_040/index.php

Note: I have had a modded ver of DexOS, running on my modded xbox.

hey hey!
now i have a CF to IDE adapter, with a 1GB CF.
the problem now is to have an OS to put inside.
and OS that don't write on it each time it starts or stops. what about a linux distro?

because CF are limited to 100 000 write cycles, it is a lot, but the windoze$ OS constantlly write on harddrives...

about the performances, it is faster than the hard drives. really faster, and no noise. i love it.
and a 8GB USB pen to contains MP3. then, this very old machine bacome better than new ones.