SGM wrote on 2024-05-29, 05:08:
Another one "TRANSCEND CFCard 32GB 133x" is much cheaper and 2x larger capacity, but it's not "industrial".
"industrial" is sort of a marketing term. Ideally, it would mean:
- Defaults to "True IDE mode" and supports CHS addressing
- Reports itself as a fixed disk, not ATAPI removable media (only Win2K & XP check for this )
- Has firmware tuned for low latency random access patterns used on computers
- Has wear leveling with plenty of "over provisioning" for a longer life span, less write amplification
My experience with the Transcend 133x models is that they work fine for DOS & Win95, but the firmware seems to be optimized for high-throughput, not low latency. They managed > 60MB/s transfers, but the file access latency was >~0.75ms. My experience with 2GB industrial CF's had throughput around 30MB/s with access times ~0.35ms when operating at UDMA6 transfer modes.
Throughput is often ultimately limited by the number of flash chips in the CF, so the larger capacity cards are likely to have better throughput when you compare devices from the same product line. A CF with one flash chip is going to be at a disadvantage compared to a 2 chip or 4 chip design, all else being the same. The downside with getting larger CF's is that if your computer has BIOS or storage device drivers older than 1997, your system may act unpredictably when storage > 8.4GB is attached.
Additionally, most CF's are also throughput limited on PC's because they don't support multi-sectors transfers in True IDE mode, while a mechanical drives >= 1996 or a Sata SSD usually will support block modes > 1. This is rarely noticeable with operating systems <= Win98se where most of the files are small. Might be more of a concern as you move into Win XP and newer.
