Back in January, I blogged about my idea of using SDHC cards as a cheap alternative to solid state drives. Well, a company called Sans Digital has introduced a 2.5″ hard drive adapter that uses two compact flash cards.
Unlike existing RAID units that employs hard drives for storage space, the CompactSTOR CR2T utilizes pocket-sized lightweight Compact Flash cards as storage memory for data safekeeping. The CR2T supports spanning and RAID 1 (mirroring) by housing up to two Compact Flash cards. Designed with the same size and connectors as a 2.5” SATA hard drive, the CR2T is compatible with the hard drive slot of laptops, industrial PCs (IPC), small form factor computers, and 2.5” hard drive enclosures. By utilizing Compact Flash cards as storage, the CR2T embraces the same benefits as Solid State Disks (SSD), including less power consumption, minimized heat generation, shock prevention, and noiseless operation. The user is able to benefit from the features of a Solid State Disk at a fraction of the cost while using the CR2T.
Features
* Houses up to two Compact Flash cards.
* Supports mirroring with auto rebuild and spanning.
* Same dimensions and connectors as 2.5″ SATA hard drive, providing an easy mirroring upgrade to exisiting laptop and Industrial PC computer systems.
* Solid State Disk benefit using Compact Flash cards.
* Lower power consumption.
* Minimized heat generation.
* Shock prevention.
* Noiseless operation.
MWave is selling the product for $89. I found a 32GB card for $140, so that’s only $369 for a 64GB drive. No too bad. 64GB cards should be out soon, if they aren’t already, so a 128GB drive is just around the corner. What’s cool about this is that you could just swap out the cards and increase the capacity of the drive.