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Replace all my old HDs with CF?

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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I've got a bunch of old machines that get pulled out once every blue moon (I think that's accurate--every two or three years) that have MFM, ESDI and SCSI 5.25" drives in them. I've begun to wonder if this is such a sound policy. Most of these systems run DOS or OS/2 or perhaps NT4 or Win95.

Would I be prudent to change these drives out for IDE-to-CF setups? Has anyone had a CF card "wear out"?
 
I've used Athena-based SanDisk CompactFlash cards in my DOS systems for nearly a decade now, with nary an issue. There is an oft-stated concern about the write activity of the Windows paging file and CF cards, but given the infrequent use you describe, and the advanced wear-leveling algorithms of the CF cards, I imagine you'll be fine. There's also the (slower) Microdrive mitigation option for that.

CF-format solutions make complete "drive" backup/restoration a snap as well, using disk imaging utilities such as WinImage on a modern computer.
 
I've never had a CF card wear out, I have several machines with IDE-to-CF setups and some get more use than others, Until recently the oldest i had in a PC was about 6 ish years old but through my own stupid fault i fried it and had to replace. My old camera is about 15 yrs old and has the original CF Card which has seen a lot of use.

If the drives need replacing personally i think CF is a good way to go, It can be much cheaper and more reliable.
 
Malc said:
I've never had a CF card wear out, I have several machines with IDE-to-CF setups and some get more use than others, Until recently the oldest i had in a PC was about 6 ish years old but through my own stupid fault i fried it and had to replace. My old camera is about 15 yrs old and has the original CF Card which has seen a lot of use.
Click to expand...

That's good news. I guess the CF card in the camera is from the pre-wear-leveling days. The newer ones might be even more reliable.

Is there not any actual independent (not manufacturer) lab test results about this?
 
It's not that any drive is going bad, but my concern is that an old MFM (e.g. Quantum 540) isn't going to last forever. More of a concern where I have systems with 2-9GB full-height SCSI drives installed. CFs are silent and reasonably fast. I just don't want to be surprised one of these days...
 
That's a tough one. I like the whirrrrr sound as those old HDDs spin up. The clicky noises they make when I access them. It's apart of the experience. However, if it were to die, I'd permanently lose it. :( So replacing a HDD with a CF would make sense. Alternatively, if you have not sentimental attachment to those old spinning discs of death, then I'd say replace all of them with CF cards.

The only problem I have with them is that they seem to be very, very particular in whether or not they work. Different models of CF cards of the same brand will sometimes work or not. This has been for SCSI, by the way, don't know if it holds true for IDE/ATAPI.

By work, I mean the computer can see it, partition it, and format it.
 
I use industrial Flash modules as IDE replacements. Their IDE emulation/translation/whatever also seems to be more accurate than most CF cards I've tried. Haven't had one fail yet, and some of them do service in custom diskless network routers (OS boot + logging)
 
I have no particular attachment for spinning disks (or as we used to call them, "RMS"--rotating mass storage). Power-hungry buggers, all. Last year, I dug into the pile and brought out an old 80386 with a 700MB Miniscribe ESDI drive and had to swap it out for a 3.5" IDE unit--I couldn't stand the noise.
 
Note that some power supplies won't start up if there is too little load on them. This was especially true of the early AT/286 power supplies; IBM had to put in an electrical dummy load on floppy-only ATs to keep the PS happy. So you might need to keep a hard drive acting as a dummy load even if it's not actually being used for data storage anymore.

My IBM PS/1 runs fine with an IDE flash memory Disk On Module (DOM), but I have a simple reason for not using it: the hard drive activity light is located on the drive itself and shines through a little window on the front panel. So if I take out the hard drive and replace it with the DOM, I lose the activity light -- which, considering that the DOM is totally silent, is important to see if it's actually doing anything or if the computer has locked up.
 
vwestlife said:
My IBM PS/1 runs fine with an IDE flash memory Disk On Module (DOM), but I have a simple reason for not using it: the hard drive activity light is located on the drive itself and shines through a little window on the front panel. So if I take out the hard drive and replace it with the DOM, I lose the activity light -- which, considering that the DOM is totally silent, is important to see if it's actually doing anything or if the computer has locked up.
Click to expand...
With so many software alternatives to the HD light you really don't need to let that stop you fro using the DOM. :)
 
Chuck(G) said:
I have no particular attachment for spinning disks (or as we used to call them, "RMS"--rotating mass storage). Power-hungry buggers, all. Last year, I dug into the pile and brought out an old 80386 with a 700MB Miniscribe ESDI drive and had to swap it out for a 3.5" IDE unit--I couldn't stand the noise.
Click to expand...
haha I'm the opposite. Had 3 FH ESDI units in my RT last year, spun each one up individually, felt like I was launching a space shuttle or something.
But if it's not your thing, then CF can't hurt. You can always buy a few extra CF cards for spares in case you do find a defective one later.

If you run in to dummy load issues, you can do what IBM (well Astec) did on the PS/2 - big resistors across +12 and +5.
 
None of my old machines have the original drives in them, Most have CF, The original drives in my XT's either died or sounded like a diesel engine with serious bearing problems, The noise was driving me nuts.
 
After spending years of hour upon hour in machine rooms with big mainframes and banks of tape drives, I don't wax nostalgic about computer noise at all. The quieter the better.

There were days when I'd get out of the machine room after 8 hours of "white noise" and I'd find myself shaking. Management passed out free earplugs which helped a bit, but I still wonder if the long-term exposure did some damage to my hearing. Add to that experience the fact that most installations kept the temperature extra-low.

Nothing wonderful about it at all.
 
vwestlife said:
if I take out the hard drive and replace it with the DOM, I lose the activity light -- which, considering that the DOM is totally silent, is important to see if it's actually doing anything or if the computer has locked up.
Click to expand...
Hey, there. IIRC in my BBS days I downloaded a TSR that had the caps lock or num lock light flicker on the keyboard for HD activity. Of course this would only be useful on an AT.. and if the keyboard has those lights.

Chuck, I think of CF cards like people converting classic cars into EVs. That's not for me but I may be forced to switch to CF against my will in the not-so-distant future.
Take an EV classic car to a classic car show and see what the die-hards say about you. But that's a different world.
 
luvit said:
Chuck, I think of CF cards like people converting classic cars into EVs. That's not for me but I may be forced to switch to CF against my will in the not-so-distant future.
Take an EV classic car to a classic car show and see what the die-hards say about you. But that's a different world.
Click to expand...

That's not a problem for me--I don't give a d*mn what other people think. They want to salivate over a piece of old kit, they can do so over my suitcase-sized SA4002 hard disk on one of my CP/M boxes. The floor shakes when it spins up.

No, most of these machines do have a useful application. I'm going to give one a go--a P1 that currently has a 6GB 3.5 Maxtor in it. I've got a spare 8GB CF and an adapter doing nothing. I'll run it for a few months on CF only and see how it goes.

I do use Microdrives on thin clients (in place of DOMs) and they've turned in a remarkable record--years running 24/7 without any problems whatsoever. I'm just not clear if the same can be said about CFs.
 
I haven't gotten in to CF yet (new territory I'm still eying). I'm not sure if it's the same technology as USB flash drives but I'm still cautious after 3 of us lost a project we were coding and had stored on early 64mb flash drives. I'm not 100% sure how it keeps the data or if it needs a battery charge once and a while or always but that provided a lack of trust for long term storage on that type of media for me. Temporary I'll happily use it to transfer data that I have on a real hard drive. But I'm coming around to wanting to play with them so I'll probably do it on some dos systems that are expendable in the first place.

Long as you have your data backed up in some fashion any media is probably fine.
 
barythrin said:
I haven't gotten in to CF yet (new territory I'm still eying). I'm not sure if it's the same technology as USB flash drives but I'm still cautious after 3 of us lost a project we were coding and had stored on early 64mb flash drives. I'm not 100% sure how it keeps the data or if it needs a battery charge once and a while or always but that provided a lack of trust for long term storage on that type of media for me.
Click to expand...
I have some SmartMedia cards that I saved pics to about 14 years ago that I've recently taken out and viewed those pics without any problems. So I'm sure no battery is required to retain the data and I fully trust this type of media. OTOH, I've written to floppy media and hard drives that were unreadable within 10 minutes. And I trust these types of media as well. :) I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this line of reasoning.
 
I can't really remember having any volatile solid-state storage since my Palm III. I had to watch for the weak battery warning and keep a spare battery nearby. After losing everything twice due to unfortunate events, i was pretty frustrated as syncing my data was troublesome as a road warrior.
I think later variants of the Palm III were non-volatile.. of course I bought-in early.
 
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