CF card *slower* than IDE HDD

[motorollin]

I have put a 16GB Transcend CF card in a CF->IDE adapter and am using it in a G4 Mac Mini running OS X Tiger. To my surprise, this is considerably slower than the original IDE hard disk. Is this normal? I was under the impression that CF cards are faster than hard disks :-?

[Speelgoedmannetje]

AFAIK Flash is indeed slower than a hdd.
Don't ask me how come...

[bloodline]

motorollin wrote:
I have put a 16GB Transcend CF card in a CF->IDE adapter and am using it in a G4 Mac Mini running OS X Tiger. To my surprise, this is considerably slower than the original IDE hard disk. Is this normal? I was under the impression that CF cards are faster than hard disks :-?

CF cards are slow. SSD's run Flash chips in parallel (like Dual Memory controlers on RAM etc...) in order to up the speed.

[motorollin]

Oops, forgot about this thread. So I assume the reason why CF cards are faster than hard disk drives on an Amiga is because neither is running at its top speed. In this situation, is it the reduced seek time of CF which gives it the edge?

[Rob]

@motorollin

The transfer speeds of CF card seem to vary quite a lot.  The fastest I've seen are Lexar Professional UDMA 300x.  They can transfer opto 45MB/sec, but cost about £50 for 4GB.

[Zac67]

Many CF cards can do PIO mode 4 (at best) - on a fast machine that's pretty slow.