Compact flash as boot drive - 133x unusable?

rudeboymcc · 30 Dec 2010 at 00:38

Hi. I've got an old sony laptop (t1xp), 1ghz pentium with 1gb ram.
the hard disk in it was a 40gb toshiba (same as the ipod used to use) and it was real slow so i just tried changing it with a 16gb 133x compact flash card.

I know it's not the fastest, but i thought it would be at least as good as the original hard disk without the noise and defrag issues.

Fresh install of windows xp took forever and is the slowest system I have tried in a while. Even hovering over start menu items took a few seconds for them to go blue. But then some stuff was instant like opening Internet explorer was faster than my c2d laptop with a 5400 rpm drive.

Why is this so slow? I know that 133x is only 20mbps but I didn't think it would make it unusable and the seek time has dropped to nothing!

I've gone back to the old drive and will use the CF for my camera but I liked how quiet it was and can't spend £200 on an ssd on a laptop worth half that.

Buchanan0204 · 30 Dec 2010 at 03:51

Buy a new Western Digital Black 250GB for it. 7200RPM, really boosts speed. Only £40.

If then you don't need or want the laptop, the drive will come in handy for something else surely.

Justintime · 30 Dec 2010 at 03:59

Not likely to be SATA though, look on ebay for a 1.8" IDE SSD, 32gb around 70 quid.

Zarf · 30 Dec 2010 at 05:22

rudeboymcc said:
Hi. I've got an old sony laptop (t1xp), 1ghz pentium with 1gb ram.
the hard disk in it was a 40gb toshiba (same as the ipod used to use) and it was real slow so i just tried changing it with a 16gb 133x compact flash card.

I know it's not the fastest, but i thought it would be at least as good as the original hard disk without the noise and defrag issues.

Fresh install of windows xp took forever and is the slowest system I have tried in a while. Even hovering over start menu items took a few seconds for them to go blue. But then some stuff was instant like opening Internet explorer was faster than my c2d laptop with a 5400 rpm drive.

Why is this so slow? I know that 133x is only 20mbps but I didn't think it would make it unusable and the seek time has dropped to nothing!

I've gone back to the old drive and will use the CF for my camera but I liked how quiet it was and can't spend £200 on an ssd on a laptop worth half that.

If what i've seen on USB pen drives and Micro SDHC cards is any indication, the controller chips are designed for sequential performance - reading and writing photos and other media files. Seek times may be similar to an SSD but the Random 4K writes are diabolical, significantly worse than a rotating drive. This is probably because they have very little cache or reserved "scratch" space and use large write/erase blocks.

Run AS-SSD or CrystalDiskMark on it and you'll see.

Look into running Windows Steadystate, this caches all writes in RAM and helps a lot if you have a poor SSD.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...for-XP-and-Vista-(32-bit)&p=318673#post318673

Spyhop · 30 Dec 2010 at 06:31

Justintime said:
Not likely to be SATA though, look on ebay for a 1.8" IDE SSD, 32gb around 70 quid.

Yep, if it's the type of connector I'm thinking about, a modest capacity "KingSpec" SSD is a good option.

rudeboymcc · 30 Dec 2010 at 11:19

The drive is indeed a 1.8" and uses a CF connector.

I saw the kingspec ones but am scared to go for it in case the same thing happens. It's a cheap ssd and I heard that performance is bad on cheap ssds.

WOuld the kingspec ones from the popular auction site be BETTER than the mechanical one? I would go for the 16gb one so even cheaper than £70.