Success with pxi flash disk?

Question

I obtained 2 8GB IDE flash disks (FDD) for 2 PXI 8176 Win2K systems having HDD problems with high magnetic flux in the area. I have been very unsuccessful in getting the FDD's to work reliably. They get a lot of write errors and log a lot of timeouts in Event Viewer. Smart Modular told me to use PIO, but that was worse.

Answer 1

Good afternoon Jim@SONGS,
Thanks for contacting National Instruments with your issue, we'll try our best to resolve it for you as quickly and efficiently as possible.
National Instruments has successfully used solid-state HDs in its controllers and offer such options as seen below with the PXI-8186RT:
http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/130​76
As mentioned in the following knowledge base, there is no reason why any 2.5" IDE-interface solid state hard-drive wouldn't work:
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/F309056​3C2FC9DC686256CCD007451A8?OpenDocument
However, we definitely have not tested all available solid-state drives and cannot support them or guarantee their functionality.  There is no obvious reason why a HD would behave any differently in a PXI controller as opposed to a regular PC, so it may be worthwhile trying to test the reliability of the solid-state HDs in a regular PC as well to verify that there is a fundamental incompatibility between your HDs and the PXI-8176.
Sincerely,
Minh Tran
Applications Engineering
National Instruments