Odd idea in windows Vista

[Randy Gloden]

"(Raid 1 up to 108)."

Oops, typo,  should be (Raid 0 up to 108)

Randy Gloden wrote:

> I did a quick check on Toms Hardware to get a few benchmarks and it 
> appears the faster SATA drives have sustained read rates of up to 75 
> MB/sec (Raid 1 up to 108).  They also reviewed two fast Flash drives 
> and the faster of the two yielded about 30MB/sec.
>
> So it appears the Flash read speed has increased to the point where 
> these applications will be more practical.  I would expect Flash to 
> take the lead in the next year or so.
>
> -------Randy
>
> www.microbabble.com
>
>
> Articles Referenced:
> http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/10/two_fast_and_functional_usb_flash_drives/page3.html 
>
> http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/06/wd1500ad_raptor_xtends_performance_lead/page8.html 
>
>
> Cefiar wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday 15 February 2006 11:50, Senectus . wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/02/14/windows_vista_flash_booster_tech/ 
>>>
>>>
>>> How is this going to be usable?
>>>
>>> From memory the top speed of USB is slower than SATA,
>>>   
>>
>>
>> USB's seek speed is much faster. If the files you're hitting are all 
>> small, you'll gain on the seek speed.
>>
>>  
>>
>>> but more importantly, FLASH memory devices have a write limit (of 
>>> about 1000
>>> writes) .. wouldn't using a USB memory key as an extended memory slot
>>> wipe out the key after a few days of use?
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Depends entirely on the flash device. Many flash devices (eg: USB 
>> keys) have 100,000 or 1,000,000 writes before failure, and even that 
>> isn't a guaranteed failure. It may still work after that, it may not.
>>
>> I think the idea is to use the USB key for the kernel and startup 
>> image files, which don't change that regularly. It'll speed up the 
>> machine at boot, but I have no idea how well it'd work for other 
>> types of files or during runtime, except possibly for commonly 
>> accessed files (eg: system DLL's).
>>
>> Note that with a bit of work, it'd be dead easy to copy things like 
>> /boot, /lib and /bin (which all change very little, and on my system 
>> with 4 kernels currently installed is about 310 meg combined) or 
>> possibly just /usr/lib (about 1.2 gig on my machine) to a usb key.
>>
>> The real issues with doing something like this are:
>> 1. Making sure you either can use the machine without the USB key (if 
>> necessary?), or recover in some graceful manner if it's not 
>> there/damaged.
>> 2. Making sure you get the right USB key and not some other device.
>> 3. Hiding the USB key from the normal USB key handlers (otherwise 
>> things could go haywire).
>> 4. Making sure that you sync the data to the key after an upgrade, 
>> but before rebooting. Just because your copy has finished, doesn't 
>> mean the data is there yet, and rebooting before the copy is finished 
>> will leave incomplete files.
>>
>> Nothing insurmountable, just stuff that would need to be done.
>>
>>  
>>
>