Has anyone run their Mikrotik router from a Microdrive (CF)? Just curious what the MTBF and other reliability comparisons are for flash & microdrive. I have a 340mb microdrive from an mp3 player and I was thinking it might have a way longer write life than a flash would.
Initially available in 170MB and 340MB capacities, the 4,500rpm Microdrive has a claimed seek time of 15ms, average latency of 6.7ms and a data transfer rate of between 32Mbit/s and 49Mbit/s.
microdrive spins = mechanical media, flash is static. Flash should have more life in it, condition to 1.000.000 writes or so (I guess we don’t need that many, because in one-two years you would be able to buy much larger capacity for much less money and just change it). Flash definitely will be more reliable in all conditions - cold winter, hot summer, mounted upside down, left side right, produces less heat etc.
1gb cf microdrive: 3,6 mbit/s read, 1,8 mbit/s write
1000mW writing, 120 mW standby
test ca. 10.000.000 writes
cheap microdrives became very hot during the test.
if someone is interested, i could email the (german language) test as pdf-file.