The do-it-yourself SSD adapter

If you can't afford the real deal, then prepare to get your jank on with this, the not-so-poor-man's solid state disk. The SDB25SD from GeekStuff4U can host up to 4x SD (not SDHC) cards for a maximum capacity of 8GB. Just slip the four cards into the 2.5-inch sled which then slots-in to any available IDE connector where -- presumably -- the total capacity is presented as a single disk volume... who knows? So how much would you pay for something like this: $50, $40, or maybe $20? Try $258.50 and you have to provide the SD flash. Word to the wise: SSD prices are dropping fast -- you'll pay about the same price for a full 16GB SSD card if you can hold on until June or so.

[Via Akihabara News]

[srw985 @ Feb 19th 2007 11:08AM]

You are a spambot!

[John Doe @ Feb 19th 2007 10:57AM]

Eugh...PATA!

[Aaron @ Feb 20th 2007 8:56AM]

How long to boot? I am guessing >5 minutes.

[Jeff @ Feb 19th 2007 8:44AM]

Wouldn't the read/writes still be kinda crap with normal SD mem shown here? I thought the SSD's coming out were going to be faster than say a 16GB thumbdrive.. right?

[Paul @ Feb 19th 2007 8:53AM]

*sigh* the depressing part is just like taht $250 (now $100) network card I am sure there are thousands of people who will buy this.

However, I can at least understand some uses for this, such as for a car PC where the fewer moving parts the better, whereas the $250 network card is just a placebo for your gamer heart.

[Josh @ Feb 19th 2007 9:27AM]

Gamers have hearts?

[Joe Smith @ Feb 19th 2007 9:38AM]

Yeah, that's why if they get shot in the chest, they die.

[Aaron @ Feb 19th 2007 9:36AM]

Ridiculously expensive and not even all that practical for those with spare SD cards lying about:

"Can only use 2 or 4 SD Card"
"Use same capacity care and speed"

[yet another Matt @ Feb 19th 2007 9:37AM]

Surely you can build something like this with over the counter pieces for significantly less. The only thing that might require a bit more work is how to translate the data location in to the 4 cards, since they would work as some kind of RAID underneath the EIDE interface.

Speed could be increased some by using faster cards, but you will also get a speed increase over hard drives because these will be randomly accessible. If someone develops a tutorial to do this, I'm building it!

[Paul @ Feb 19th 2007 9:45AM]

That would be very interesting to see the build instructions because as you say it does not look that complex and I have to admit I think its pretty sweet, just a little expensive.

As for the speed boost I believe that it has been show that for lots of small files flash cards are better than hard drives, but for large continuous files, hard drives are faster.

Because while hard drives take longer to actually find the files, once the file is found they can transfer it faster than the flash cards.

[Alexander UA @ Feb 19th 2007 10:15AM]

That resembles Panasonic's P2 flash media format for professional video cameras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P2_%28storage_media%29). P2 cards are really enormously expensive.

[pretorious @ Feb 19th 2007 12:32PM]

I had a FreeSCO router (Don't knock it, I use Vayatta now :P) that used a 256Mb CF card with an adapter I got for $15. The read/ write speed probly sucked, and if it accessed it more than just on startup/ shutdown it probly would have died quickly... still a good option if you just want to mess around till SSDs come down in price.

[regomodo @ Feb 19th 2007 12:36PM]

This isn't new. You can already do it with Compactflash. Albeit in not as a neat package

[Arif R @ Feb 19th 2007 2:26PM]

and for like, $5.

[Frank @ Feb 19th 2007 3:07PM]

well, bought a CF-to-IDE adapter for 9 EUR on eBay a few days ago...
no idea how long the 4 Gb CF card will last but... for a mere 40 EUR it's worth a try.
250 USD... hahahaha! a joke!