SUCCESS WITH THE CF-MOD!!!Thanks to H2O's observation that SLC based SSD drives work, but not MLC based SSD, I went ahead and ordered an SLC based CF card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820183236I couldn't find many SLC CF cards, and this one was the only one I could find from a reputable place.
Bottom line is that I got a marginal improvement in battery life. With the HDD and SSD, I was getting record times of around 2.5 h, and with the CF card, I got a record time of just over 3 hr. I would estimate around 3 h, 5 min, which is the last time I looked. The unit did a hard shut down when it ran out of juice, and I could only recover 2 h 42 min of recording.
I don't think that this is the same problem that H2O and I had with truncated file fragments because in those cases, the damaged files were randomly distributed, and I could not access them. In this most recent trial, all the fragments were intact and playable. I probably could get the whole 3 h if I stopped the unit manually and let it write out the file and PRJ file.
Anyway, I will still be recording with an external battery, since 3 h is just barely enough to cover a whole concert, including the opener.
The CF card has the advantage over the SSD drive in that the SSD drive got very hot, whereas the CF card got warm.
I am wondering why I got such a long run time with an MLC CF card (~ 5 h), when SLC memory is supposed to be lower power consumption. It could be that my battery is wearing down.
Anyway, bottom line is that money is probably better spent on getting a larger HDD. Unless you really want to go solid state, the price is not worth the advantage at this point.