[j-nsp] Will CF sizes other than 256M work ok?

[Zoltan A. Ori]

Nothing needs to be done. Remove the RE, install the flash, reinstall the RE 
then do 'system request snapshot partition'. Next time you reboot it should 
boot from flash. 

Oh, if your CF card has write protect make sure that you unprotect it.

128M, 256M, 512M or even 1G CF should work just fine. Unless there are some 
hardware restrictions that I am not aware of, you are working with FreeBSD as 
the base OS. It recognizes and mounts all those devices with no problem.

Zoltan



On Sunday 25 September 2005 19:36, Jonathan Disher wrote:
> What needs to be done to a CF card prior to dropping it into the RE?
>
> I hate to admit that I've been too lazy/busy to have put cards in my M20
> yet.
>
> -j
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
> [mailto:juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Richard A
> Steenbergen
> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 2:48 PM
> To: Joe McGuckin
> Cc: Juniper NSP
> Subject: Re: [j-nsp] Will CF sizes other than 256M work ok?
>
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 12:54:22PM -0700, Joe McGuckin wrote:
> > I've noticed recently that 256M CF cards seem to becoming obsolete.
> > 512M was the smallest I've seen in our local camera & electronics
>
> stores recently.
>
> > If I needed to pick up an emergency replacement for a failing CF card,
> >
> > would a 512M card work ok? I think that partitioning and rebooting
> > from the larger card would work, but I wonder about a subsequent
> > "request system snap" - would that try to copy a 512M /root partition
> > from the CF onto the existing 256M disk /altroot partition ?
>
> I had this exact problem last week. Replaced a flakey 96M CF with the
> smallest thing I could find at the store, which turned out to be a $40
> 512MB SanDisk CF. It works fine, the software is intellient about how
> much it will partion on the CF and HD root.
>
> FYI for folks interested in seeing the S.M.A.R.T. specs on their drives:
>
> (from the shell, as root)
> router% /usr/sbin/smartd -oa /dev/ad1
>
> To get an idea of how old your drive is, look at the line:
>
> (  9)Power On Hours Count    0x0012   020   020   000       0000000089dc
>
> Aka 89dc(h) power-on hours. Convert 89dc from hex to dec and you see
> that this drive has been powered on for 35,292 hours. Well above the
> 20,000 hour MTBF spec for these drives, which are also only spec'd for
> 333 power-on hours per month.
>
> Yes the CFs do seem to fail more than the HDs, but with many folks still
> operating 5+ year old RE-333's which have been in continuous operation,
> you should expect to see more failures soon. If you're going to replace
> your drives, using the Hitachi Travelstar E-series drives which are
> designed for 24/7 operation in blade servers is highly recomended.