#346561 - 22/07/2011 17:31
Current HD->CompactFlash status?
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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With my empeg throwing several IDE errors at my desk, usually preceded by a hard drive struggling to spin up, I'd like to convert my unit to one using CompactFlash cards. Anyone else done this recently, and have any tips or gotchas that came up?
My main plan is to go with 2 32GB cards, to just outright replace the 2 30GB drives my unit currently has installed. This should be simple enough with the converters on the market.
Thinking ahead though, is there a solution that works inside an empeg to allow 4 cards some how? The current price jump between 32GB and 64GB is still sizable enough that it would be nice to be able to use 4 32GB cards, allowing for some growth.
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#346568 - 23/07/2011 18:04
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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i'd also like to hear what people have to say on this: at 4 cards, this would become viable for me, but i'd need 4 64s to hold my whole collection!
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#346585 - 25/07/2011 06:25
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Anyone else done this recently, and have any tips or gotchas that came up? Nope. Instead, I put in a 64GB Transcend PATA SSD.
_________________________
-- roger
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#346697 - 02/08/2011 20:27
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Looks like my research is going to speed up a bit here, since the second 30GB drive finally gave out yesterday. The one dual CF to single IDE converter I found is this guy, but the reviews, and information in it are poor at best. I'm guessing it's a solution if I wanted 2 cards, with one in the slave, and the other in the master position. That wouldn't get me to 4 cards in the empeg though, since the one adaptor would consume the IDE bus. Sourcing the parts locally appears to be out now, with the Frys shelf showing an empty slot for the one adaptor they carried (just a normal 1 to 1 converter) with no ETA on a restock.
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#346722 - 04/08/2011 04:20
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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I ran through the old long CF thread to try and find any useful info for now. Much like a few others in the long thread, I've found plenty of dual CF to IDE adaptors, but they all appear to present the two cards as a master and slave device. None, including the one I linked to earlier with the plastic shell appear to do RAID0 on their own. And I'm not quite adventurous enough to try what russell did to get 4 cards onto the one IDE bus. Bitt linked to this, and it seems like a potential alternate solution, as this would allow 8 total MicroSD cards to be installed into an empeg easily. Problem is, I can't find a place to buy them from, nor any confirmation on if it actually works in IDE mode. I'll try and contact them to see if they can answer the IDE question before I spend more time trying to buy one. If it supports 32GB MicroSD cards, that could allow 128GB in one drive slot far cheeper then a 128GB CF card.
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#346759 - 04/08/2011 17:59
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 06/04/2005
Posts: 2026
Loc: Seattle transplant
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It's interesting to read about your endeavors and I'm glad you're posting. I'm sure many people are thinking along the same lines- how to economically get a reasonably sized SSD in the empeg.
You've inspired me to attack an older machine and trade out the tired 3.5" drive for an 40-IDE-to-CF adapter. 8GB UDMA should be enough for a Win2k box meant for surfing. I know the hardware isn't up to snuff anymore, but the experiments with an SSD-based Win2k install intrigue me. I guess I'm doing it more for that fun than anything else.
_________________________
10101311 (20GB- backup empeg)
10101466 (2x60GB, Eutronix/GreenLights Blue) (Stolen!)
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#346986 - 18/08/2011 14:04
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Robotic]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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I had no luck tracking down the Photofast CR-7200. It's looking more and more like it was vaporware.
I did try to contact the manufacturer, and ask about a different product, but never heard back. The one place that listed it for sale has no ETA on having stock, and couldn't confirm they ever had any.
I had briefly looked into the other Photofast solutions that are more hard drive form factor with multiple card slots, but decided against that route as none were 2.5 inch IDE form factor. To get the empeg going again, I've bought two Sybia adaptors from Microcenter, and 2 CF cards are on their way now.
I may still peruse alternatives for empeg #2 later. The idea would be to have empeg #1 in the car, and #2 at work for music. May set up something to keep both in sync somehow, but this is all long term idle time projects that I may not get to. I do like the general idea of converting both to solid state storage.
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#346988 - 18/08/2011 14:33
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 06/04/2005
Posts: 2026
Loc: Seattle transplant
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Did anyone ever try out one of those IDE-SATA adapters in combination with a 2.5" SATA SSD?
This is the route I'd like to take. I'd just wait for prices on a big SATA SSD to come down.
With my luck, though, they'll come down after the wildly successful introduction of a different memory technology based on microscopic bits of whale blubber or something.
_________________________
10101311 (20GB- backup empeg)
10101466 (2x60GB, Eutronix/GreenLights Blue) (Stolen!)
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#348353 - 25/10/2011 02:05
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Robotic]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Still working on this, once I finally found time to install the adaptors, a flaw was discovered. The particular models I found indicated slave support when I looked at them in the store. Unfortunately it looks like the PCB is shared with a dual slot converter, and they put the slave jumper on both. The back side has pads for a second CF slot, and the adaptor does nothing when it's jumped to slave mode. Time to settle on an online adaptor and have it shipped since I have 2 good 32GB cards in hand.
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#348354 - 25/10/2011 06:06
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi,
Not very good luck with those that have the JMocron chip or the Marvell Chip (Addonics sells these).
I have only been trying to use 2.5 inch SATA Laptop disk drives. Doesn't matter what size of drive. The problems run from not being able to converse with Emplode to walking over the Ethernet Controller configuration data, to DOA.
Don't know what the SSDs will do...
Good Luck,
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#348358 - 25/10/2011 06:41
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Ross Wellington]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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... not being able to converse with Emplode I've gotta be honest here, even though I'm the one mostly responsible for emplode -- it's a bit flaky. I'd drop down to the FTP/HTTP stuff built into Hijack for file transfers at this point.
_________________________
-- roger
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#348376 - 25/10/2011 14:10
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/02/2002
Posts: 3212
Loc: Portland, OR
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... not being able to converse with Emplode I've gotta be honest here, even though I'm the one mostly responsible for emplode -- it's a bit flaky. I'd drop down to the FTP/HTTP stuff built into Hijack for file transfers at this point. Or possibly try JEmplode...
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#348377 - 25/10/2011 14:27
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: canuckInOR]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Or possibly try JEmplode... ...which uses Hijack if it's available, but has its own particular flavour of flakiness.
_________________________
-- roger
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#348378 - 25/10/2011 14:31
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Or possibly try JEmplode... ...which uses Hijack if it's available, but has its own particular flavour of flakiness. Yeah. Here, I've reverted to using emplode (from within a VM) rather than Jemplode, because Jemplode just is too flaky and empeg syncs are already time-consuming enough without that added flavouring. Cheers
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#348443 - 26/10/2011 00:53
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: mlord]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi,
My latest shot at this was to purchase an inexpensive ($50.00 USD), computer today with Linux (Linux Mint), installed on it. The system has 2 SATA ports, 2 IDE ports, a 2.4GHz Intel Celeron, and 2GB RAM - enough infrastructure (I think), to carry out the task. I had them install the Linux onto a WD 1TB SATA 3.5 inch drive I had as a spare. The 1TB OS drive is on SATA 0.
A while ago, I used FTP to load all of the FIDS from a dual 250GB drive Empeg system into a directory of another 1TB SATA WD 3.5" drive. Since the FIDS are just a continuation from hda to hdc, the FIDS appear as a flat file system. So, the whole directory is contiguous FIDS.
Next, I will install the FIDS drive onto the Linux SATA port 1 temporarilly and copy the FIDS to a directory on the 1TB OS disk. At that point, a FIDS file structure will now be on the OS drive. I will then remove the FIDS drive from SATA Port 1.
If that works, I will prep a 1TB Laptop drive in the Empeg using the JMicron IDE-to-SATA converter. These work just fine for anything local to the Empeg player. The Marvell chip will prep the drive fine, but you lose Ethernet controller.
Next, I will copy the FIDS from the OS drive to the prepped 1TB Laptop drive. Then I will install the 1TB drive into an Empeg with the JMicron SATA-to-IDE Converter and invoke a commanded database rebuild, to link the database together and fix the Tags.
At this point I haven't seen the player have a problem playing the music database once the database is loaded and the Tags rebuilt. So, this has some chance of working.
If this works, I think I saw a program to make DOS files into FIDS. If that is so, I might be able to build a FIDS database outside of Emplode and load a full database onto the drive through the Linux system.
After you have had a chance to stop laughing, tell me where and why it appears that I need to just stop and play with my fingers and toes contently instead of this stuff.
Crazy, probably. But it's grtown to become a hobby of mine.
Thanks,
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#348498 - 26/10/2011 17:17
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Ross Wellington]
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veteran
Registered: 01/10/2001
Posts: 1307
Loc: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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I have to say mp3tofid + rsync makes things soooo much easier...
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#348518 - 26/10/2011 20:42
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: julf]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Ordered one of these (Syba Best Connectivity 2.5" IDE 44-pin to Dual Compact Flash Adapter) and verified it works great for the empeg. Plugged both cards in, attached the cable, and it just worked. The form factor is also perfect for mounting directly onto the hard drive carrier with no modifications needed. The adaptor doesn't do anything special to try and combine the two flash cards into one virtual drive though, so this isn't a solution to add 4 CF cards to a Mark 2 unit. With the Mark 1, this would be a great way to go though cheaply.
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#348519 - 26/10/2011 21:12
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Oh, and Mark, just for you  "cp /dev/hda /dev/hdc" None of that fancy dd stuff here. Letting the empeg clone my old drive right onto the CF card #1 now. Will clone the second card when this finishes. With 30GB to copy, I'm guessing this is a measured in days operation.
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#348522 - 26/10/2011 22:19
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 06/04/2005
Posts: 2026
Loc: Seattle transplant
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Curious if you're using anything special for the copy task. I like this thing- http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29
_________________________
10101311 (20GB- backup empeg)
10101466 (2x60GB, Eutronix/GreenLights Blue) (Stolen!)
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#348528 - 26/10/2011 23:56
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi,
Just an FYI...
If you use the cat /dev/hda > /dev/hdc command using the Empeg alone, it takes around 2.5 days each to copy a 250GB Drive. That's 5 days of time for a 500GB file system, but it does work.
Once again, it points to the stability of the hardware design to be able to do this for a continuous time and not have it panic or croak.
Good work guys!
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#348538 - 27/10/2011 07:01
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Ross Wellington]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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...it takes around 2.5 days each to copy a 250GB Drive... Which is why I used rsync between the two disks the last time I did this (HDD -> SSD). It might be slower (overall), but it meant that I could deal with interrupting it if necessary. I was also merging two disks down to one, which was a consideration as well.
_________________________
-- roger
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#348548 - 27/10/2011 15:15
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Oops, no root FS on the second drive like I had thought there was. Guess I did that on one of my older units. Time to find an IDE system at work I can use to finish the clone.
Forgot to run time on the cp command, but it finished up sometime overnight.
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#348561 - 27/10/2011 22:52
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi Tom,
What size is the drive you were copying from and to? I was curious how the relationship of disk latency related to the read and write operations of both drives. Theoretically, the SSD would have little to no latency compared to a rotational media drive.
This might be the case if the code has wait states for timing or was expected to be processing the next queue to write during rotational latency time.
Just curious.
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#348589 - 29/10/2011 02:34
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 06/04/2005
Posts: 2026
Loc: Seattle transplant
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That's awesome! Good work!
_________________________
10101311 (20GB- backup empeg)
10101466 (2x60GB, Eutronix/GreenLights Blue) (Stolen!)
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#348591 - 29/10/2011 03:43
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Robotic]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Ditto!
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#348628 - 31/10/2011 01:09
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Ross Wellington]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
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If you use the cat /dev/hda > /dev/hdc command using the Empeg alone, it takes around 2.5 days each to copy a 250GB Drive. That's 5 days of time for a 500GB file system, but it does work.
Once again, it points to the stability of the hardware design to be able to do this for a continuous time and not have it panic or croak.
Good work guys! cat (treating it as a char device) is likely to be a lot slower than the nearest dd bs=512 equivalent. A dd with bs=1M is likely to be fairly optimal (no memory pressure and a good tradeoff), but I've never experimented Hardware really should be that stable! If it fell over after a week of constant transfer I'd still consider it flaky...
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#348633 - 31/10/2011 04:24
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: altman]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi,
Next time I could try the dd copy. The block size of 1Meg should speed things up.
Thanks,
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#348648 - 31/10/2011 12:46
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: altman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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cat (treating it as a char device) The device is a block device, regardless of the program opening/reading from it. cat uses 32KB buffers by default in such situations. The kernel reads a maximum of about 64KB at a time from IDE drives. Cheers
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#348929 - 06/11/2011 05:05
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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One expensive route I did find for a DIY SSD is this unit: http://www.jpcentury.com/pro_con.aspx?id=P_00000025It takes 3 CF cards and presents them as one drive. The company selling them appears to be moving away from IDE to newer SATA ones, so if this interests anyone else, you may want to track them down soon. Though from reports by others here, SATA to PATA adaptors seem to work well in the empeg. Price is a bit high at ~$230 or so. But this may be worth it if someone is sitting on several higher capacity CF cards.
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#348992 - 07/11/2011 19:35
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Hrm, something somewhere has gone wrong, and was exposed by my upgrade from 2.0 to 3.0 alpha 11. empeg:/empeg# ls -al
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 4 0 0 1024 Jul 25 2005 .
drwxr-xr-x 15 521 220 1024 Oct 6 01:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 1024 Jul 25 2005 bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 220 14 Jul 25 2005 fids0 -> ../drive0/fids
lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 220 14 Jul 25 2005 fids1 -> ../drive1/fids
drwxr-xr-x 6 0 0 1024 Jul 25 2005 lib
lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 220 13 Jul 25 2005 var -> ../drive0/var
empeg:/empeg# ls -al /drive0
total 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 1024 Jul 6 1999 .
drwxr-xr-x 15 521 220 1024 Oct 6 01:45 ..
empeg:/empeg# ls -al /drive1
total 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 1024 Jun 2 1999 .
drwxr-xr-x 15 521 220 1024 Oct 6 01:45 ..
empeg:/empeg# mount
/dev/root on / type ext2 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
empeg:/empeg# fdisk -l /dev/hda
Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 3899 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 5 40131 5 Extended
/dev/hda2 6 10 40162+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 11 13 24097+ 10 OPUS
/dev/hda4 14 3899 31214295 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 1 3 24034+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 4 5 16033+ 82 Linux swap
empeg:/empeg# fdisk -l /dev/hdc
Disk /dev/hdc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 3899 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 5 33232+ 5 Extended
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(65, 15, 63) should be (65, 254, 63)
/dev/hdc2 5 9 33264 83 Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(131, 15, 63) should be (131, 254, 63)
/dev/hdc3 9 11 16632 10 OPUS
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(164, 15, 63) should be (164, 254, 63)
/dev/hdc4 11 3900 31242960 83 Linux
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(1023, 15, 63) should be (1023, 254, 63)
/dev/hdc5 1 3 16569 83 Linux
/dev/hdc6 3 5 16600+ 82 Linux swapFor the drive expansion, I ended up using gparted with the CF cards attached to a USB to IDE adaptor. /dev/hda is the CF card I cloned in the empeg first. /dev/hdc was cloned on my Mac using dd. I think my attempt to hang onto the nostalgia of all my old music loadout, along with whatever crazy hacks* I was doing in the past, and the HDD->CF conversion has introduced so many variables. Time I think to just nuke it from orbit and move forward with the new plans to integrate it into my newer music strategy. * I was finding remnants of the GPS app, empire, emphatic, various web interfaces, my old distributed.net setup, strongbad TTS clock, random bits of debian linux, and some other things still on the drives.
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#348996 - 07/11/2011 20:33
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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What is it that you've found that "has gone wrong?"
Edit: oh, okay.. funny looking sector/cylinder ranges.
Still, it all looks valid. What's it supposed to look like?
Edited by mlord (07/11/2011 20:36)
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#349001 - 07/11/2011 22:22
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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The other issue is that the music partition wasn't mounting properly, hence the missing fids folders /empeg/fids0 tries to point to. *edit* Also, hda and hdc should have been identical in fdisk. The block boundaries were weirdly out of place, probably a gparted failure that it didn't report well.
I could have dug deeper, but I just didn't trust the state of things any more. I can't remember every little thing I did to this unit, some of it dating back to my hacks I carried over from the Mark 1 in 99.
If I do want to revisit the "classic" empeg I used in the past, the data is still saved off, both on the drives I replaced, and as a backup I took.
Edited by drakino (07/11/2011 22:57)
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#349010 - 08/11/2011 01:22
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi,
I noticed this statement in your post....
"Though from reports by others here, SATA to PATA adaptors seem to work well in the empeg."
I am still trying to get these to work. I could not get Emplode to play well with it.
I don't think I have seen a post of success yet. Did I miss something?
Thanks,
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#349011 - 08/11/2011 01:46
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Ross Wellington]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Oh, so there's supposed to be tunes/playlists there already. That's what I blindly missed. And yeah, I'm with Ross: I don't recall seeing many success reports with adaptors yet. That said, they should work, though I do know that a lot of them are quirky. Cheers
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#349057 - 09/11/2011 19:55
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
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cat (treating it as a char device) The device is a block device, regardless of the program opening/reading from it. cat uses 32KB buffers by default in such situations. The kernel reads a maximum of about 64KB at a time from IDE drives. I understand that, but isn't it going to be going through at least one more set of buffers using cat vs dd? Memory bandwidth isn't amazing on the empeg either
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#349059 - 09/11/2011 20:29
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: altman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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No, dd and cat both do pretty much the same system calls normally: read() followed by write().
Newer versions of dd have a "DIRECT_IO" flag, which gets rid of one memcpy (or possibly both) from the loop. That would be quicker on an empeg, but probably neutral on a PC.
With dd, one can also easily specify a very large buffer size, which will reduce the number of read/write calls, saving a tiny amount of overhead.
Cheers
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#350569 - 06/03/2012 04:56
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: mlord]
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member
Registered: 16/12/1999
Posts: 188
Loc: Melbourne, Australia
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Some more datapoints relating to SATA -> PATA...
My empeg hard disk has been making funny noises, and is occasionally (although with increasing frequency) refusing to start up. I figured I'd try out the SATA situation.
I ordered two separate adapters, and have tried them with both a 500G WD drive, and a 120G Intel SSD, just with one drive at a time.
With the JMicron based one, the empeg didn't seem able to accurately identify the drives, for either drive.
With the Addonics adapter, the empeg was able to identify each drive properly.
I was able to partition and format the 500G drive with no problems. However, as Ross has experienced, the ethernet was broken with this adapter. Also, the USB was broken. Both work fine when I use the old PATA hard drive instead.
I've attached a boot log from this. There seems to be an issue detecting the ethernet adapter, and I can't help but wonder if I was able to force the kernel to look for it at a particular address, maybe it would work?
With the Intel SSD, things seem to go wrong when I start writing significant amounts of data to the drive. Trying to format a partition or install the bigdisk builder on it fails. I haven't catalogued the errors yet, but the most common one I see on the empeg display is hda: err: write_intr (which is obviously missing all the interesting stuff at the end). (The SSD works fine plugged into a SATA->USB converter on my PC.)
Is it possible that the SSD is just returning from writes too quickly? This seems unlikely: given that HDDs have caches I would expect many writes to return very quickly.
Anyway, my plan is to see if I can get some more details about the errors with the SSD, and maybe that will be helpful.
If anybody has ideas about what sort of logging / debugging might be useful for this, I'm all ears.
Richard.
Attachments
bad-boot-log.txt (409 downloads)
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#350695 - 09/03/2012 01:42
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: rjlov]
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member
Registered: 16/12/1999
Posts: 188
Loc: Melbourne, Australia
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I've got some more logs, and I'm not really sure what they mean. Some random, possibly interesting facts (some reiterated from before): - if the SATA->PATA adapter is a slave, then the ethernet is recognised (although writing this I realise that I didn't test if the ethernet actually works).
- SATA->PATA works fine (albeit stomping on USB and network) with a spinning disk, was able to build disk and also copy about 60G of music to it, with no errors that I noticed.
- SSD with SATA->PATA has issues with writing. Errors generally look like:
hdb: lost interrupt
hdb: stat_err: status=0x58
hdb: drive not ready for command
hdb: stat_timo: status=0xd0
ide0: reset timed-out, status=0x80
(See attached log of mke2fs for details) - I did once see errors like this, but haven't been able to reproduce reliably:
hdb: stat_timo: status=0x80
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:44 (hdb), sector 262232
hdb: drive not ready for command
hdb: stat_err: status=0xff
hdb: no DRQ after issuing WRITE
- SSD advertises itself as having a 0kb cache, (see attached output from hdparm -i/-I) I wonder if that might be part of the problem.
In the absence of suggestions I'll just keep pottering away. I'll post here in the event of a breakthrough. Cheers, Richard.
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#350698 - 09/03/2012 05:31
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: rjlov]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi,
I ended up giving up on this for a while.
After I got the hardware somewhat working (much the same problems as you are experiencing), I ran into problems with Emplode and Jemplode not enjoying the SATA experience.
I hope you find something I missed.
In the meantime, the WD 250GB PATA drives went up in price.
Thanks,
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#350702 - 09/03/2012 11:47
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Ross Wellington]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Newer drives, especially SSDs, are a lot faster with ATA protocol state transitions than older drives. This exposes flaws in the original (Intel) ATA protocol spec, as well as races in the Linux IDE code that I wrote nearly 20 years ago.
I believe those races have been discovered and fixed in upstream kernels, and I could probably find/fix them here with a few hours of fussing about.
There's also the possibility that the protocol bridges themselves may require slightly special handling, though I doubt it. Those things are not well tested on ancient, slow, PIO-only hosts (like the empeg) though.
Cheers
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#359836 - 26/09/2013 16:25
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: drakino]
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old hand
Registered: 17/01/2003
Posts: 998
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Well it looks like HD number three, or maybe four, I kind of lost track, is on the way out. I have to use the old wack and spin procedure to get the HD to spin up.
I'd really like to use a non-mechanical drive this time. So I'm looking for advice. Is this the path I should go down or has anything newer and better come along?
I only need about 20G of space. I just want “whatever” to last more than a couple years. I’m not hard on the empeg???
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#359838 - 26/09/2013 16:47
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Redrum]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Is this the path I should go down or has anything newer and better come along? You can get PATA SSD drives which just work, you know...
_________________________
-- roger
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#359839 - 26/09/2013 17:00
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Roger]
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old hand
Registered: 17/01/2003
Posts: 998
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Wow, thanks. I was not looking forward to "making something fit." Just drop in it you say... great. I sure have been out of the loop lately on things like this. I really should spend more time inside reading and not out in the sun
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#359890 - 07/10/2013 11:41
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Roger]
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old hand
Registered: 17/01/2003
Posts: 998
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OK, now I’m totally transistorized. I think these transistorized devices will really catch on. No issues at all on the install. Just trying to recall Linux commands was the biggest problem. I hope this lasts longer than the other drives. I plan on having my Jeep and empeg til I'm dead.
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#359893 - 07/10/2013 19:40
Re: Current HD->CompactFlash status?
[Re: Redrum]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14493
Loc: Canada
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Speaking of which. I recently replaced the 128GB mSATA drive in my notebook with a 256GB mSATA drive. Which left me with the original 128GB mSATA. Dx.com and various eBay sellers have mSATA-to-IDE44 adapters, which would allow it to work inside an empeg.
So if you find yourself with a spare mSATA, that's one option.
Cheers
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