[Discuss] compact flash drive versus USB flash drive?

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-10-07 07:11-0700 Murray Strome wrote:

> From: "Alan W. Irwin" <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca>
>> [..] This micro PC
>> has one "CompactFlash Type I/II socket" designated for a solid
>> state disk
>> (SSD), and 4 USB 2.0 ports.
>>
>> Thus, it looks like I will have a choice of buying a compact
>> flash card or a
>> USB flash drive to use as my SSD.
>>
>> [...] Does it matter
>> which I buy or does
>> one format have some known advantages/disadvantages compared to
>> the other?

> My guess would be that depending upon the way the computer is designed,
the Compact Flash COULD be faster.  That is assuming that it is connected
directly to the internal bus.

The compact flash socket has an ATA interface, but those come in various
speeds so its hard to know whether that will be faster than a USB 2.0
interface or not.  Has anybody here compared recent compact flash sockets
with USB 2.0 flash disks for speed?

> The last time I checked around, I think the lowest cost 4GB Compact Flash
card available in town was either Costco or Walmart.  I think that Walmart
may be dropping Compact Flash (or may have done so already).  Last time I
looked, Costco still had them.  Camera makers seem to be moving away from it
to either their own proprietary format or Secure Digital. I have been told
that this is partly because of the way the contacts are designed.

Thanks, Murray, for this availability information.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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