What type of hard drive should I use?

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I'm trying to decide between using a CF card as my primary HDD via a CF to IDE adaptor or just a regular HDD, should I?

My biggest concern is that the huge amounts of read/write cycles an OS has when opening/running programs and saving data would kill the flash pretty quick. I don't know much about memory types, so I'm needing some advice. What do you guys think?

EDIT: This is going to be for my old beat laptop which is a 733 Mhz Gateway that I plan on dragging around everywhere with me to browse the web and such until it dies.

EDIT 2!: Please don't anyone suggest I run linux or some OS other than Windows, I am not fond of linux and do not enjoy using it.

[MrPopo]

I'm not sure I see the point of getting a CF with adaptor compared to just a regular HDD.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I'm not sure I see the point of getting a CF with adaptor compared to just a regular HDD.

True, it's mostly just my crazy "What would it be like to do that?" side coming out.

Speaking of regular HDD's anybody have some cheap 2.5" IDE's lying around?

[Ziggy]

New Egg's cheapest 2.5" PATA drive...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136129

[Hatta]

I haven't tried it myself, but a CF card should be much faster at reads than an old laptop hdd. That means faster startup, and loading apps faster. You're right that there are a limited number of write cycles, but I wouldn't worry too much about that. You're still talking about 100K writes per block. And when a block goes bad, your OS should just mark it and reduce the apparant size of the volume. No big deal, especially on hardware that's just for fun. I'd be sure to disable virtual memory though, that will cause a lot more writes than just average use.

[Niode]

If you're going to faff around with shit like that just install windows to a USB drive and do it that way. At least when the flash drive dies you won't have to mess around opening the system up to replace a CF...

Also, you should use Linux, you can install it to a USB stick very easily. Linux is very good for just general web browsing. Beats the pants of off winbloat.

[Hatta]

Is a laptop that old going to have USB2.0? My 1.1ghz Thinkpad only has USB1.1. He'd probably at least need a USB2.0 PCMCIA card. In theory PATA/IDE could reach 133MB/s, while USB2.0 maxes out at 60MB/s. USB is pretty CPU intensive too. A CF/IDE converter is a pretty good idea, if you can find one that's good and fast.

Edit: Of course, fast CF cards are really expensive. SATA->IDE might be your best bet on a budget.

[Ziggy]

I don't think you'd be able to fit a SATA-PATA adapter in there. Usually laptops only have just enough space to click a drive in.

And yeah, USB would be very slow. Even if it has 2.0, it'll still be much slower than a PATA hard drive. And I'm willing to bet it has USB 1, which would be a nightmare.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

If you're going to faff around with shit like that just install windows to a USB drive and do it that way. At least when the flash drive dies you won't have to mess around opening the system up to replace a CF...

Also, you should use Linux, you can install it to a USB stick very easily. Linux is very good for just general web browsing. Beats the pants of off winbloat.

The laptop I'm thinking of using CF's for has USB1.1 and doesn't allow booting off of a flash drive if I recall correctly.

Also, please read the first post. I asked nicely for people to not suggest linux, I've had this argument several times and and getting extremely tired of telling people that I don't want linux.

[MrPopo]

Also, please read the first post. I asked nicely for people to not suggest linux, I've had this argument several times and and getting extremely tired of telling people that I don't want linux.

Don't let the mean open source people make you feel bad Mod Man. I fully support your decision to not use Linux.