À (At) 12:22 -0800 21/01/03, Martin Joseph écrivait (wrote) :
>Stick with linear flash for reliability for now...
>
>Paul is still working on his driver, so counting on it as a working
>stand alone solution would be foolish IMHO.
Yes and no.
Yes, linear cards are still more reliable than ATA cards, but I'm
pretty close to linear cards stability I think.
Latest bug that corrupts data is in fact two-folded, a part that
doesn't corrupt data but generates a -1001013 without a good reason
(fixed so far) and another part I haven't fully identified yet (still
spending as much time I am able to on this). No one reported this
problem, so I think I was the first to experiment it.
Linear cards have two problems regarding stability:
- they can die without any warning, in which case everything is lost.
Same thing can happen with ATA cards but it is less likely for two
reasons:
- ATA cards unit is 512 bytes while Linear cards unit is 64 KB.
Therefore ATA cards units are written much less often than linear
cards unit
- cheap linear cards are often second hand and could have been used
a lot before, hence causing problems
I've never seen an ATA card that died. I've seen (I've been next to)
2 cards that died and I heard about a small dozen of other linear
cards that died.
- there is a bug with linear cards store engine that can let you lose
all your data if you fill it too much.
Still, to anwser's Ted's question, I'd say I wouldn't use an ATA card
if I weren't able to do weekly backups (either by splitting an ATA
card and doing backups on the second half or with a linear card of
with a desktop computer).
But I wouldn't use a second hand cheap linear card if I wouldn't be
able to do a regular backup either.
Paul
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