[lug] What interesting things can you do with 4GB SD wafer?

Zan Lynx zlynx at acm.org
Thu Nov 30 11:49:46 MST 2006


On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 12:47 -0700, siegfried wrote:
> I noticed that http://www.tigerdirect.com/ still has 4GB SD wafers on sale
> for $40. With an $10 adapter from Office Max, you can use it like a flash
> stick (at least that is what I did with my 0.5GB wafer -- seems to work
> great).
> 
> I ordered mine Sunday. I hope they honor the rebate. I wonder if the
> entirety many of the popular distros can be installed in 4GB and then boot
> from the wafer. Has anyone done this?

If your BIOS can boot from USB this should be pretty easy.  I haven't
done it with CompactFlash or SD, but I have booted from a USB thumb
drive for DOS BIOS updates, and Linux rescues.  I never installed a
floppy drive on my newest system and burning a CD for 20 MB seems a
waste.

One thing I've been trying to do is use filesystem layering with fast CF
cards to get the same effect on Linux that ReadyBoost gives Windows
Vista: fast reads of often-used and slow seeking files.

The 4 GB card I got was about $150 and does about 20 MB/s.  Not bad.
I'd also like to try the new SanDisk Ultra IV.  It's supposed to do
between 30 and 40 MB/s.  This is mostly done by sort-of RAID striping
the internal flash memory.
-- 
Zan Lynx <zlynx at acm.org>
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