using cd-r cd-rw as memory or swap (is it possible) ?

[klhrevolutionist]

I was having a converstaion with a friend about utilizing a cd-r and or cd-rw as memory or as swap.

I want to kniw first, is it possible ?
Second if so how to do this ?

[Guest]

No

[Flash]

CD-RW is only good for around 1000 erase/write cycles, so even if you figured out how to use a cd-rw for swap it would "wear out" the disk pretty quick, not to mention that CD access times are very slow even compared to hard drives, so CD swap memory would be uselessly slow.

[ezeze5000]

How about using a flash drive for swap?

Here is the idea: Boot with a flash drive and use another flash drive
as swap.

Could use a modified wakepup disk?

[Flash]

Flash memory also has limited erase/write cycle lifetime, only the number is closer to a million. Flash filesystems deliberately write the files all over the drive (fragment them) so that no memory location gets more use than another. I'm not sure but I think that writing to flash memory is pretty slow and takes much more power than reading from it.

My guess it that flash memory might work for swap memory but probably not very well.

My advice is, put your money in more RAM and forget about swap. RAM is fast, sips power and never wears out.

[Guest]

How about using a flash drive for swap?

Here is the idea: Boot with a flash drive and use another flash drive
as swap.

Could use a modified wakepup disk?

All slow things down ?

Ever noticed that it takes longer to copy to a flash device than an IDE\SCSI device ?

[Guest]

Flash filesystems deliberately write the files all over the drive (fragment them)

Is it safe to defrag your flash drive? >_<

[Flash]

Flash filesystems deliberately write the files all over the drive (fragment them)

Is it safe to defrag your flash drive? >_<

Yes, since I presume you would only do it occasionally, but it is not really useful. Filesystems for read/write memory have to be designed to deal with fragmented files. Defragmenting a hard drive speeds up transferring large files and reduces wear and tear on the head, but does not otherwise affect operation. In the case of flash memory I suspect other things have more impact on memory speed.

[Alucard_the_dex]

After reading a few Topics in another forum my flash drive scares me now.-_-

Does anyone know of a book/html/pdf/website that explains how to care for your Flash Drive?

[kethd]

It would be dumb to use CD for swap.
CD are "external storage".

It would be dumb to use any flash device for swap. They wear out, each time you write.

All flash devices write slower than they read. The details of exactly how they write and exactly how they wear out are very complicated. Maybe a flash device would wear out from 100,000 TOTAL write operations!

Defragging is always risky. There would be little point with a flash device, and it would use up some of the life.

The only thing really scary about using flash is to make sure you are not writing on it a lot, maybe by mistake, maybe without even knowing! Some have little lights to help you be aware. I guess unplugging it is the only way to be sure. In Linux, from a command line you can give a sync command to make sure all cached material is written before you unplug.

[Flash]

After reading a few Topics in another forum my flash drive scares me now.-_-

Does anyone know of a book/html/pdf/website that explains how to care for your Flash Drive?

The Wikipedia has a very extensive article on flash memory, with lots of links to more stuff at the end. I like this one.

[Alucard_the_dex]

=o! many thanks Flash!

[Guest]

I've seen somewhere)a RAM card that plugs into an ISA slot (or maybe an IDE slot) and looks to your computer just like a HDD. A very very fast 4GIG HDD. How about using THAT for a swap drive or a type-2 Puppy install? I THINK it has battery backup so it saves contents during powerdown time.

[Guest]

The latest one is by Gigabyte and plugs into a PCI slot and connects via a SATA so that it appears to the OS as a SATA drive. It's plugs into the PCI slot to get power while the computer is shutdown but still connected to the mains, the batterey backup is there for when the mains is removed.
But if you are going to lash out on 4x1GB sticks of RAM I'd be using then in the system (if supported) rather than using them for swap.

[kethd]

Sure, "external" ram could be great for swap etc, depending on connection bandwidth -- how much do these things cost?

[Flash]

...But if you are going to lash on 4x1GB sticks of RAM I'd be using then in the system (if supported) rather than using them for swap.

Indeed Given that the purpose of swap memory is to act as virtual RAM when you run out of real RAM, it would seem a waste of potential to put RAM on an IDE bus and use it as swap. Especially battery-backed RAM, because swap memory may only have fragments of files and calculations the CPU was executing when it needed a bit more RAM. The directories that make sense of the contents of swap memory are probably lost when the power is turned off.

[kethd]

But it is possible to imagine situations where external ram would make sense -- primarily where there is a limit on internal ram, that you would like to virtually exceed, at maximum speed.

If any real USB 2.0 connections were really capable of the 60MB/s that is always claimed, a gigabyte or two of such swap space would be a nice thing to have around, generally...

Another odd-ball thought is the uses of very big and fast modern hard drives, after they become very defective. Even if they only have a little surface area still working reliably, that could certainly be very handy for older computers, where the speed would be a real asset. And if you only use a small part of the surface, you have very little head movement, great for swap. And if the HD buffer is say 8MB, could you use just that, and get full zero-latency r/w service?