HW hack - change old slow HDD to a CF card?

[trodas]

Segate 13G ST313021A on Pentium 90 @ 125MHz:

http://s13.postimg.org/n5y9xs7av/13_G_Seagate_P90.png

Average - 6.4MB/sec - now this is SPEEED!

...

I wonder, if anyone have in operation slower HDD

...

Therefore I wonder, if someone have a experience with replacing such SLOOOW HDDs with PATA to CF adapter and CF card(s)? The latest models promise very fast speeds - 160MB/sec is quite above PATA possibilities:

http://s29.postimg.org/f9nkz1gav/San_DIsk_Extreme_PRO_32_G_CF.jpg
SanDIsk Extreme PRO 32G CF card

...and since the adapters are just wires, connecting the CF card to PATA interface (CF cards work on same PATA interface!) and only in best cases, you can choose the voltage (3.3V or 5V) and you get the power and activity lights:

http://s21.postimg.org/yiqzxdh5j/De_Lock_91620_PATA_to_CF_reduction.jpg
DeLock 91620 PATA to CF

...then there should not be any problem of using CF cards as old PATA HDD replacement(s). Only problem I hear, that there should be changed bit on the card somewhere, that change the device type from removable to fixed. Then it should act as normal HardDriveDevice.

But maybe I missed something...? Do anyone have experience with this? Could someone share tips, software for the change (from removable to fixed) and experience in general?

[trodas]

Well, since SanDisk is not going to reply, I tried with the default 5V setting the DeLock adapter I mentioned earlier with very old, 0.5G CF card SanDisk SDCFH. It does support PIO 4, but no DMA and the speed is very slow:

http://s15.postimg.org/3te86uf23/HDTune_0_5_G_San_Disk_SDCFH_512.png

Tested on ASRock 775Dual-VSTA (P4, 3.8GHz WinXP, alligned). Also works (or more precisely, get detected) on the target Asus TXP4-X, so so far, so good. Except the speed, lol.

Now the question is - what voltage to use for the SanDisk Extreme PRO 32G CF card and how to change the removable bit to fixed, so there will be the caching in Windows possible.

[trodas]

So I tried and the good news are, that SanDisk Extreme PRO 32G CF card works well with 3.3V settings! There are the result, enabling Smart a 32bit mode transfer did nothing, PATA133 is supported, but it is not going to get higher. Sadly. Still, I think that this is a reasonable speed improvement:

http://s18.postimg.org/cwmlneayh/HDTune_32_G_San_Disk_SDCFXPS_032_G.png

However, now to bad news. The CF card is completely useless, unless someone tell me how to change the removable bit to fixed. Period. You cannot use the CF card for anything w/o that. Two examples:

I use Mini Tool Partition Wizard Pro to setup the drive on boot CD - it let me allign the partitions - when creating second partition (one 4G FAT32 for OS, rest for DATA and NTFS = usable settings for waza), it tells me, that I cannot use that partition under Win, as Win recognize only ONE partition on removable device. I was like... that it is, I'm screwed.

So for lolz, I started the install. It want well even at 83MHz FSB with the ATI Rage XL card (IDE HDD refused to work under such conditions, it worked only when S3 Trio64 is used at that clock), but then I get to the drive partitioning and problems arise. D partition is invisible (unpartioned space, lol) and there is no way to create a new partition there, because on removable drive, only one partition is supprted. So OK, I try installing and using only the 4G partition... but no! It cannot install, because this partition is NOT compatible with WinXP.

So basicaly, w/o the change from removable to fixed, any usage of any CF card as HDD replacement is doomed.

...

I'm quite mad at SanDisk - they should rename themselves as ScamDisk, because they are selling not CF cards, but CF compatible *) cards, with the *) exception for the possibility to change removable to fixed bit. I believe, that there is open possibility to lawsuit against SanDisk and any other CF card producing company, that produces products, that does not meet the CF card specifications. Because this is false advertising and misleading labeling of product. This is not a CF card, period.

[bolo2002]

for you it's a challenge to resurrect a dead one?
i've done this years ago but it don't worth the time and money,you still keep an old hardware.

[trodas]

Well, the channenge is to get fastest performing old hardware Sadly, the companies todays blocking every attempts to use their hardware with another way that they assume is the right one...

I found myself two ways, ATM, that attempted to flip the removable / fixed bit on my SanDisk CF cards. I have own a oldie SanDisk 5V and 0.5GBy big CF card (SDCFH-512) too. The second tested card was the SanDIsk Extreme PRO 32G (SDCFXPS-032G) CF card.

1 - there is a program called BootIt v1.07, that offer the flipping between the removable and fixed devices:
http://www.getusb.info/flip-your-bit-usb-utility-to-make-local-drive/
It does promise that it will work (despite showing my 32G CF card as 18G) and it even claim to work:
http://s10.postimg.org/uf2r8fko9/Flipping_removable_bit_not_working.png
...but the device stays as removable. Both my CF cards cannot be changed. It should work good on USB drives... but it does not work on both mentioned CF cards.

2 - there is program called atcfwchg.com:
http://www.ehow.com/how_7811193_set-cf-card-fixed-mode.html
Again it claim to flip the removable bit to fixed on CF card, connected thru PATA to CF card adapter into a PATA interface. The usage is shell and it is simple:
atcfwchg /P /F
That should set the CF card, that reside on the primary IDE channel to fixed mode. In reality it output this error:

D:\>ATCFWCHG /P /F
NAND Athens ID Drive Config Word (Fixed/Removable) Change Utility Version 1.4.
Fail (error #20)
D:\>

So changing the "most important bit" on any CF card is not possible for these SanDisk cards, witch make them virtually useless for any PC usage, as for example, two partitions are not possible on removable device under Windows, while it is not a problem on fixed device...

There are also "solutions", like a diskmod-0.0.2.2, witch is basically a driver that trick Windows into treating all devices as fixed. Yet that is not going to help me to be able to install Windows on the CD card, therefore I cannot attest on it's functionality of quirks or bad things that happen, when you use it. I saw video of this driver working well on Win 8.1, but since the change is not permament ON THE DEVICE and it is just a Win patch, then it does not interest me one bit.

So far, I'm clueless. Hopefully the information I gather will help someone... On SanDisk forum this message I posted disappeared very quickly (under 20 min)... so, beware, users. SanDisk does not sell CF cards, but compatible CF cards with the exception that the most important change you are forbidden to do it and they will even actively seek and eradicate all informations regarding the topic...

[bolo2002]

Originally Posted by trodas

Well, the channenge is to get fastest performing old hardware

i agree with you,too many 'old' hardware are trashed,they can still offer decent use to much people...

[trodas]

Or it can offer a oldschool overclocking fun

Anyway, guy discovered that the SanDisk utility change the Identify Device configuration word from 848Ah to 044Ah.

1283:16C1 BF0006        MOV	DI,0600                          | if removable, then
1283:16C4 833E280801    CMP	WORD PTR [0828],+01              | write 0x848A to 0x630 
1283:16C9 740A          JZ	16D5                              |  
1283:16CB C6453084      MOV	BYTE PTR [DI+30],84              |
1283:16CF C645318A      MOV	BYTE PTR [DI+31],8A              |  
1283:16D3 EB08          JMP	16DD                             |  
1283:16D5 C6453004      MOV	BYTE PTR [DI+30],04              | else write 0x044A to 0x630  
1283:16D9 C645314A      MOV	BYTE PTR [DI+31],4A              |

Witch makes me wonder, if someone could re-create such utility to change my CF card to fixed device rather that being removable, witch cause all sorts of problems with Windows... and slow-downs.

Once I managed to run the card using the Hitachi CF card driver with DMA and I get pretty nice 20MB/sec speed:
http://postimg.org/image/qx7kmwknx/
http://postimg.org/image/j9tltdttn/
...but on next reboot it fails to PIO mode again and the speed is about 2MB/sec with *HUGE* CPU load

Hopefully could someone help me out, because that suxx

[Kjacky]

Hard Disk low level format tool will help

[trodas]

W/O changing the "removable" device to "fixed" it is not going to work. No HDD tool recognize the "drive" as HDD