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On Tue, 23 Sep 1997 23:41:36 -0400, Jont Allen wrote: >Paul Rubin wrote: >> >> From: "Paul Khoury" <pkhoury@loop.com> >> >> Also, does anyone here (besides myself) use an ATA Flash RAM >> card for use as extra storage? >> >> I have a 10 meg card and have been thinking of getting a larger >> card if/when I can afford it. At present I'm not using the flash card >> since it was in my Omnibook 300 which now has a broken screen :(((. >> I can read the files from it under w95 but I prefer to run Linux. >> >> The idea of using flash is not as much to have "extra" storage as to >> spin down the hard disk and have a machine I can use and access files >> on without the noise of a rotating disk. My machine is a 755cx with >> 40MB of ram. What I'm thinking of doing is one of: >> >> 1) configure Linux to have 20 mb of regular ram and a 20 meg >> ramdisk. At boot time, load the ramdisk with the most commonly >> used system programs (for me, that means emacs :)) and spin down >> the disk. My user files would be stored on the flash card. Then >> I can edit, run "ls", etc. all from the ramdisk without needing >> the HD, and when I write out files they go to the flash card so I >> still don't need the HD. In case of a crash, my user files are >> still saved in flash; the ramdisk contents get lost, but that's >> ok since they're just copies of system programs that are on the >> HD. I'm not sure how I'd set this up--maybe I'd have to put a >> tiny root file system on the flash card, and mount the ramdisk to >> some directory on it. >> >> 2) Give up on the ramdisk idea since it probably involves a lot of >> configuration hassle. Buy a much bigger flash card (85 MB >> Sandisk card = about $1000) and put a normal small system >> installation on it including user files. 85 MB was a lot of >> space even for a hard disk not that long ago :). Unfortunately >> I haven't got the cash for this now. >> >> In both cases, the hard disk would be NFS auto-mounted so when I need >> a less commonly used file, it would spin up. All the directories in >> my normal search path (/bin, /usr/bin, etc.) would be present in >> ram or flash, but the less commonly need programs in them would be >> replaced by symlinks pointing to the HD. That way if I mis-type a >> command name, the HD won't spin up after the filename isn't found >> in the ramdisk. >> >> Comments are welcome, especially ideas about how hard it would be to >> carry out idea #1 above. I'm not that much of a Linux configuration >> whiz. >> >> Note, one hassle with flash cards is their writing speed is a LOT >> slower than hard disks. The current regular Sandisk cards write at >> around 300K/sec which is 2x cd-rom speed. The new "double density" >> cards are even slower at around 75k/sec (floppy speed), though they >> come up to 160 MB (!) in a type 2 pcmcia card. But since I'd normally >> just be writing out small files, the slow speed is probably ok. > >It seems to me that this is a great idea that could greatly extend >the battery life, and make the machine quite. These are both huge >pluses. > >I dont think it is as hard as you think. What you need to do >(as I understand it, as a non professional linux user), is >to move the real-time stuff to the card, namely the stuff >that accesses the disk. If you made links to the files >/etc/crontab, and used the hard disk spin down program, >it would all work. You might not even need the memory card. >Just make a ramdrive from regular memory, with these few files >that are frequently accessed by the kernel, and that would >solve the "problem." > >I like it, and I think it might even work. Lets look at this harder. >jont >-- I'm sure it's not too hard. If one had enough money to spend, a 40MB drive might be able to have X and Emacs (MAYBE), and you could boot with a boot disk and use the mount root=/dev/whatever command, or boot from the hard drive, and mount the Flash card under /USR. Paul