Here is my story so far. I have a NAS, and I'm having some problems with my C drive. I haven't lost anything, but it shows me that data and OS on the same drive are not a great idea I'm not 100% sure the drive is toast (it is over 5 years old though), but I'm considering a replacement. The NAS is a 1U system based around a P4 with four 3.5 bays that use PATA (Stortrends 2104 picked up at a surplus place). The bays use a backplane with a proprietary connector, but the caddies break it out to standard 40 pin ATA. What I am considering is trying to cram a CF adapter and 2.5" drive into the system somehow, preferably into the bay so it's all still removable without a lot of fuss. Before I start trying to get the parts and figure out the wiring mess, I wanted to see if anyone could tell me if they were using CF for their OS install and if it performs acceptably. Another option is to try and cram 2 2.5" drives in there, but I think I can save some space with a CF based system.
If it's Linux or Unix based then a fast CF card should be OK. I've it's Windows based then the pagefile will kill the CF card fairly quickly.
I've put together my Frankenstein's monster and it looks like it will work, I just need to make sure the swap file gets put on a standard HD. I'll need to get some cables. I need to really short SATA cables (a few inches) and I will probally need to find the stuff to make a custom power cable. I need one that is a 4 pin female molex to 2 floppy and 1 sata.
Swap file pretty much sucks. Not sure if it comes in handy for a NAS but the first thing I do on a machine with 2GB or more memory is turn it off.
Well... it is possible to install windows on a CF card, but it is incredibly fiddly. I have done it, then swapped to a Linux OS simply because it was easier and more suited to what I was doing. I recommend this guide.
I have 4 GB of RAM to throw into the system, but it's a rather old P4 so I'm stuck with what I can do with a 32 bit address space. I don't know Linux well enough to consider using it on what is my primary file server, but maybe one day..... So far, XP seems OK with one caveat. The CF card shows up as removable, so XP wanted to put the startup files on another drive. It put the swap file there too. I have not done any heavy duty testing yet, I was trying to see if the drive I am working on replacing is really dead (and it's flaky enough to be unusable). I want to fiddle with it a bit more, I realized I have a 20gb 2.5" SATA drive left over from when I upgraded my 360. I think I could fit 2 2.5" drives in the caddy, so I have a backup plan if the CF card route does not work out.
Well, if you are only running a file server, then allow me to recommend FreeNAS, it is Linux based, but works wonderfully as a NAS server. It has a lot of stuff integrated into it now, so makes a great headless server. Laz
