RAIDed SD cards and PSP goodies
IF YOU ARE a geek, there are a bunch of products you just know would be good, but no one seems to make. Photofast was at CeBIT with the not only one, but four of those, including the coolest gadget of the show.
Eight SDs, no waiting
If you have ever tried doing stupid tricks like RAIDing USB drives one night after far too much alcohol and White Castle food, you will love the Photofast CR9200. Take 8 SD sockets and put them on a PCB that looks like a 2.5-inch drive.
Toss in a caching RAID controller with 128M of DDR2 cache, and slap a SATA2 interface on it. If it looks like a 2.5-inch drive, it should act like one, right? I have been wanting this product for a long time. If you use fast SD cards, Sandisk Ducati's are recommended, you can get ~250MBps throughput. There is also a 9100 version with 4 slots and 16G of onboard flash as well. Drewl.
CR-7200 CF card
If you are unfortunate enough to have cameras that require CF cards, you know the meaning of slow and expensive memory. The CR-7200 tries to do away with these problems as well. It is a CF card with no memory, but it has 4 MicroSDHC card slots.
For the completely dense, let me explain it, the 7200 raids MicroSD cards to get very high speeds out of a CF for a low cost. Initially they will only be sold with Sandisk cards installed, but you shouldn't have to wait all that long for bare ones. It will cost about 150 Euros when they are released at the end of the month with 4 * 16G microSDs included.
Anyone with a PSP will curse the word MemoryStick, Sony's proprietary format. It has been eclipsed by SD, but Sony won't let it die. They make far too high margins on it, and that comes out of your pocket. Without broad support, it stagnated, slow and expensive, not a good combo.
PSP memory on a budget
Once again, Photofast rides to the rescue with a dual SD card widget that emulates a memory stick. The CR-3100 screws onto the back of the PSP and plugs into the MemoryStick slot. Not only do you get fast and cheap, but it allows you to have 64G on a PSP.
If that is too bulky for you, the CR-5400 on the left of the PSP might be more to your liking. It is a MemoryStick adapter with two MicroSD slots. Want the same speed with a little less capacity and a lot less bulk? Pick the 5400.
Overall, Photofast came out of nowhere and had all the goodies hardcore geeks are looking for. If this is their first offering, I can't wait to see what they come up with next. µ
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The Older Models CR9100/CR9000 didn't offer anything good, cost saving, or tremendous bang fer buck.
Can the Inq Put their mitts and do a bit of testing ?
at least, nvidia now knows where to send the Russians...
(Charlie, you left your address in the pic!)
"If you are unfortunate enough to have cameras that require CF cards, you know the meaning of slow and expensive memory."
I think I must have missed something CF was just called slow... I have a 333X UDMA CF card that does 45mb/s, I've never seen an SD card do more then about 20mb/s... As for being expensive sure the fast ones are more expensive but it will take SD cards hand down for speed.
I've been waiting for something like the SD RAID forever -- though I was expecting it to take the form of multiple 1" magnetic disks in a 3.5" housing and be essentially disposable.
But... does this actually do what I've been waiting for? I'd like a self-contained SATA device that's smart enough on its own to know when it's failed and redundant enough that I can get the data off it when it's started blinking to alert me to swap it.
Without looking up the specs, this looks like it's more geared to striping for speed, and does not seem to have any idiot-proof indicators for failure that wouldn't rely on The Dangerous World of Software, e.g. SMART.
And good luck finding SLC SD cards, oh well... (But with eight, and some sort of reduced-wear buffered mirroring, potentially swapping MLC once a year wouldn't seem so bad!)
"Overall, Photofast came out of nowhere and had all the goodies hardcore geeks are looking for. If this is their first offering, I can't wait to see what they come up with next."
Came out of nowhere? Try Akihabara.
This stuff has been available on shelves for ages now...
The only card formats that are slow *and* expensive are the "proprietary" ones
It's a really nice idea, but RAIDing four MicroSD cards, which are not really built for speed, would not seem to me to be a very good route to high performance. I too would like to see these tested however.
Dimdows can’t do USB RAID. Linux can.
CF cards slow? Yeah, right... These are the fastest cards on the market so far...
I just saw this article at the link:
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/139438,psp-goodies-and-raided-sd-cards.aspx
I'm not sure it matters either way, but since I can post here, I'm bringing it to light.
Hope it helps!