speeding up disk-based laptop by moving /usr to flash?

[Brendan Kidwell]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 1:04 PM, Tom Metro <tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I'd look around and see if you can find a software layer that will use the
> CF card as a dynamic cache for the hard drive. Some file systems (ZFS) will
> use SSDs in this fashion. There may be something more general that would let
> you couple the CF and the HD as a single block device.
>

I hadn't thought of that. ZFS looks nice, but it's not well supported on
Linux yet. Not sure if I'm ready to take the plunge and switch to BSD or
Solaris. I'll look around.


> Would I get different performance from using an SD card in the SD slot?
>> From
>
> what I read tonight it seems the "Secure Digital" interface has even more
>> limited bandwidth than a typical CF card.
>>
>
> Memory card readers are often internally interfaced via USB, so it seems
> logical that the CF card could outperform it, but why not test it, if you
> can.
>

Actually I think I read last night somewhere on ThinkWiki that the X41's SD
slot is connected to the PCI bus not via USB. But yes, I need to just try. I
have a MicroSD card for my PDA, and an SD wrapper/adapter for that. I should
see how that performs and if it is acceptable, go buy a 16GB full-size SD
card.


Brendan Kidwell