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New CF Microdrives - Seagate 5gb - $5.69 ea shipped

twolazy

twolazy

Veteran Member
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
2,276
Location
Chicago, IL
Ran across this seller about a month ago, received all 4 drives that I ordered. All the drives work great! Figured others here might use CF cards as well in vintage systems, so figure I share...Price sure is right and can't beef about the added bonus of being able to use swap files! (I know you can with flash, just its slower and detrimental to the card's longevity...) =)

Sweet little drives for the price. Blow away old 3.5"/2.5" 2gb and smaller drives performance wise believe it or not, and draw only what 50ma tops! Currently playing with 2 in raid 0 setup on a 386sx on a caching isa ide controller w/ 32mb ram. ^_^

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...3618411&ssPageName=STRK:MERWX:ACTPNL:LNLK:ITM

Model ST1
capacity: 5GB
data format: FAT32
Connector Type: Compact Flash II
transfer: 8MB/Sec (7.7 MB / sec)
2MB Buffer
speed: 3600 rpm
Click to expand...
 
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I've been using the Seagate ST-1 drives in my little Linux server built on a thin client. I chose it because it uses very little power in comparison to a regular IDE drive. The one I'm currently using has been running 24/7 since sometime in 2009. So, regardless of what they say, these drives work very well in continuous service--and don't have a write-cycle limit as flash does.

One surprising thing is that they are "SMART" drives, which I didn't expect from such a small package.
 
Are there other vintage systems someone has used these in? I'm trying to justify the purchase or lack thereof. I mean I have some systems (Atari Portfolio) that supports a CF drive but not sure if it would support that size or if I'd be restricted to buying IDE->CF adapters and using it for those projects. Still cost of shipping included is pretty ridiculously cheap deal. Wish there were some larger sizes out there although still not sure what I'd use them for yet.

Only 2 days left for the sale though!!11! then it'll be back up to $5.99 w/free shipping ;-)
 
I have a few 4gb drives from old iPod Mini's that still work fine... Still haven't used them, though the plan was to stick them into the IBM L40/SX laptops. Seeing the price on these, I'm tempted to get 2 or 3 just to have around, as they're certainly cheaper than new CF alternatives.
 
barythrin said:
Are there other vintage systems someone has used these in? I'm trying to justify the purchase or lack thereof. I mean I have some systems (Atari Portfolio) that supports a CF drive but not sure if it would support that size or if I'd be restricted to buying IDE->CF adapters and using it for those projects. Still cost of shipping included is pretty ridiculously cheap deal. Wish there were some larger sizes out there although still not sure what I'd use them for yet.
Click to expand...

I've used them with the XTIDE. I've got a digicam with an official 2GB limit, but I found that formatting 4GB cards using Windows XP to FAT16 works just fine. I wonder if you could simply partition one of these drives with a smaller primary partition and get some use out of them...
 
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Yeah, I see several other HK sellers with the same picture and price. Still, free shipping is really the deal on these. I'm a dork but I submitted an offer lol, if not then I'll still probably pick one or two up and figure out what I can do with them later. I've honestly avoided the CF market all this time so not sure what converters or compatability I'll find. I do have in mind possibly replacing a drive in a Gateway Handbook which sounds like a common less power upgrade if it works (see several folks having trouble booting off them).
 
Wasn't me! ;-) But interestingly all 3 HK sellers with them pulled them down. Yes they sold a lot, one listing indicated they had 700 or so of them so dunno if they really sold out or are re-evaluating the price. I struck out so I'll monitor it a little bit.
 
jrehmer said:
What is the benefit of this over a standard CF card?
Click to expand...

For me, the benefit was that this was a disk drive not a CF card, CF cards have a limited write cycles, also I do not trust CF, I have a USB stick which I have only used a few times and already the files have been corrupted, this may have been the fault of windows but it does not fill me with confidence about them.

I checked ebay.uk and they have all disappeared from there too, when I bought mine the seller had 881 left.
 
mnbvcxz said:
For me, the benefit was that this was a disk drive not a CF card, CF cards have a limited write cycles, also I do not trust CF, I have a USB stick which I have only used a few times and already the files have been corrupted, this may have been the fault of windows but it does not fill me with confidence about them.

I checked ebay.uk and they have all disappeared from there too, when I bought mine the seller had 881 left.
Click to expand...

I missed those, but would have checked it out earlier if they hadn't been mislabelled as CF. I just assumed that's what they were.

I installed a CF in my DOS box a while ago so we'll see how it goes. I have a networked backup system in place so I won't get burnt, but my sense is that the better cards will last a long time. They are not at all like USB sticks in their internal structure. I think the main problem would be if you use them with software that is constantly writing. A Windows system for example would not fair well, but a DOS system with one little write every 15 minutes or so (and only with an operator present), will probably go for a long time. I'll find out.
 
TBH almost every commercial 'appliances' uses a compact-flash card inside; reliability simply hasn't been a problem for anything decent.

Quality cards have proper write leveling algorithms and in any case as said for our purposes we'd never hit the limit (even at a pathetic 1,000 write cycles life you could write at 110KB/s continuously for over two years with an 8GB card).
 
Thanks for the replies, I accept that there are no reliability issues with these cards, but you must admit that disk drives are just more authentic in old systems.:D
 
Ya 12-15 is normal price, i ran onto the auction somehow as a fluke in my boolean, think I was searching by model number for the exact drive, since I didn't have one in my collection yet (didnt own a seagate yet)... Some how the way he listed it or category made the listing not show up under most searches. My guess is these were near free surplus from the floods in tiawian or warehouse being cleaned due to downtime. Either way killer deal for us!

Very happy at least some other peeps got these before they ran out and could be of use. I got my 4 already >.< . Now I have 7 micro drives, and the ide adapters you can find on ebay in 5 packs cheap, or solo for like 1.40ish.
 
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