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Originally Posted by Adam Richards
1) What speed (in RPM) is your hard drive? Lower is better for this; SCSI is NOT A GOOD IDEA. Is flash media an option? Several different *nix distros can fit on a 2gb card, and vibrations wouldn't even bother the card.
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Flash is definitely a good idea, in fact much better than a hard drive, for something like this. Think of read/write heads moving a couple thousandths of an inch above the surface of the platters, containing data which you need, and then think if you've ever seen a smooth-running lawnmower (or any smooth-running 1-cylinder engine, for that matter). It's similar with CDs; by getting my read heads out of alignment on one drive (I was adjusting it because it wouldn't read reliably), I managed to have it cut concentric rings in a disc, because the head was dragging on the surface. You will too, if you try to retrieve data from a CD, only they won't be so evenly spaced, as the drive seeks back and forth over the entire surface, and bounces wildly.
Windows 2000 fits on a 2 GB card too, provided that it's properly pruned down (to leave a couple hundred MB for swap space); you might need to install to a larger drive (which you have), delete extra stuff, then image it to a card. Then again, Linux works too, if you prefer.
In any event, any computer store will carry (or be able to get) the appropriate size of compactflash card; compactflash is pin-equivalent to ATA, but uses a smaller connector, so a simple pass-through adapter will allow it to be used with any common motherboard through the 40 pin connectors. See
here for the card, and
here for the adapter for example.
Also, I can't help but correct this: SCSI is a bus specification. It is
not an indication of shock resistance. Modern SCSI drives are often built with high spindle speeds, but older ones can be had with much slower spindle speeds; I've worked with a 4.3 GB, 4200 rpm SCSI drive, and a brutally slow 200 MB SCSI drive from the mid 1990s. Though I agree that it seems sensible enough that peak spindle speed and vibration resistance may be linked, I'm not sure that the correlation is significant, especially compared to other characteristics of the drives' designs.
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Originally Posted by Greg Needel
edit: 1000th post
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On the
ArsTechnica Forums, they have a procedure for dealing with people who brag about multiples of their thousandth post. Ask about the "DoD" in that forum's "The Lounge" section....