Brilliant idea!

But then, people buying the cheapest CF cards will moan how slow they are.

I'm sure they will make their own way into Europe, via ebay... from Hong Kong

Over here a 16gig CF card is ~300$. That means it would cost me 600$ for a 32gig drive or a 16gig RAID, that's excluding the cost of the device. Uh... this is ridiculously expensive. The idea is neat, but until the cost of CF is down, it won't take off.

You can do a similar thing on desktops by just pairing up IDE->CF adaptors with onboard RAID on most modern mobos. (Or SW RAID if you want to run Lunix)

Over here (UK) I just very quickly found 16GB CF cards from crucial for <£80, so it ain't that expensive.

Presumably though, the performance of this device will be somewhat lacklustre, probably not even equivalent to first generation SSD's. So it's only advantage is low power?

Check out the OCZ Core Sata 2 SSD drives. ~$300, 120MB/s read, 80MB/s write, lots of IOPS.

The idea of RAID1 in a single 2.5" caddy is quite appealing for anyone that has really really really important data on their laptop.

And/or is just anal - like me.

For $79 plus the CF cards:

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad2sahdcf.asp

Plus that gives you USB as well as SATA connectivity.

(No relation with Addonics beyond that of a customer).

Now I have a small compartment with my harddrive I can use to smuggle my lil' baggy through customs and they'd never be the wiser :)

I wonder how the RAID impacts the built-in wear leveling of flash storage. It may well lead to a higher wear on the flash memory.

Crucial CF cards are nice, but expensive.

I've seen 16 GB cards other places for 40 quid.

Curiously unavailable from the GB£-priced site (SD/microSD only), though still there on the US$-priced one.

Very peculiar.

Can someone please explain how RAID is a benefit (or even needed) for SSDs?

"anyone that has really really really important data on their laptop"

important data on a laptop? - that would be NHS or MoD then?

Does this mean I can use the old CF format HD from my Creative MuVo in this?

I think this is excellent... only wish the cards were $5 each and at least 1 TB in size....

Now that would be pretty good.

I am still looking for the day, when a PC has an atomic battery the size of a peanut, runs for a thousand years on one charge and the whole PC is the size of a matchbox, with a holographic 21" screen..

I'd keep my old buckle spring IBM keyboard tho... it's a champion.