Greetings, This morning, I saw a new CF listed on geeks.com (No, I don't work for them -- whenever I like what I see for sale on their site, I have to pay to touch it). They offered a Seaqate ST1 5GB CompactFlash Type II Card for $135 (and also a Hitachi 4GB for $88). I had not realized that CF drives were available with that much capacity. In fact, after checking the seagate.com site, I found out that they offer CF devices as large as 8GB. While these days a 5GB drive doesn't sound like much ... I remember that the first HDD I used was an IBM 2311 disk drive (removable) with capacity of 7.25 million bytes and was about the size of an under-the-counter refrigerator (about 2 ft. by 2 ft. and about 4 ft high). For that matter, that 1983 IBM XT with a 10MB HDD about the size of a brick was also amazing. MGD PS ... sorry, but that 5GB CF device probably won't work in any of our cameras.

A good read.

y shouldn't the 5Gb not work ^^ ?

Attached Link: FAT sizes: FAT-12, FAT-16, FAT-32

@neverfinder Some products that accept CF devices are not able to use all of the capacity. You may be aware that some of the older PC motherboards are limited as to the size of the HDD that may be attached. Some cameras have equivalent limitations. Another concern is the type of file system that can be supported. The possible Microsoft file systems include FAT-12, FAT-16, FAT-32, HFPS, NTFS. For each of these file systems, there is a maximum size HDD that could be supported. FAT-12: Maximum number of clusters: 4086 Cluster size: 512 bytes to 4096 bytes Maximum Volume Size: 16,736,256 FAT-16: Maximum number of clusters: 65,526 Cluster size: 2048 bytes to 32,768 bytes Maximum Volume Size: 2,147,123,200 (~2GB) FAT-32: Maximum number of clusters: ~268,435,456 Cluster size: 4096 bytes to 32,768 bytes Maximum Volume Size: about 2^41 bytes ... and, yes a CF device is formatted with a file system. Mount a CF device in a CF reader; open Windows Explorer; right-click that drive letter and choose "Properties". You may have heard that you must always format a CF in the camera NOT on the PC -- That's because the software on the PC might format the CF device with a file system that the camera's software cannot process. MGD

I will not use the CF drives any more 2 have failed on me at most inopportune times. It could be the write speed of the drive not matching the write speed of my camera body, but I just can not risk loosing 2 gigs of photos. It is for that reason that I only shoot with 1 gig card max now. It forces me to change cards and not put all your eggs in one basket. Randy

Two failures? That seems like quite a bit with a memory card you can accidentally send through the wash and not worry about it.

I won't shoot with over a 1 gig either. I thought the others were too much a pain. I also like having different cards on hand to seperate certain shoots. I get 95 images to a 1 gig card and that is enough per card for me.

2 micro-drives failures, I have not had any problems with cards.

@Randys I'm curious ... What was the camera and firmware level? Which microdrive manufacturer, model, size? Were the microdrives formatted in the camera body or by using a PC? > write speed of the drive not matching the write speed > of my camera body That wouldn't be causing your problem with the drives. All computer I/O transfer operations "pace" each other. The design of the PCMCIA/IDE interface (that's the base for the CF interface design) includes ways to transfer data in/out; ways to test for I/O completion; ways to test for and recover from I/O errors. That having been said, it is possible for a specific implementation -- that could be either the microdrive or the firmware in the camera body -- to have code that does not properly implement the PCMCIA/IDE/CF design specifications. After those 2 failures, when you made inquires to both the camera and microdrive manufacturers, how did they respond? Did they do any testing? Suggest a firmware upgrade? Admit to an incompatibility issue? ... etc. At the very least, if the camera manufacturer claimed that the drive "just doesn't work" ... or " ... doesn't work with [our] camera", the drive manufacturer would have been very interested to find out the exact technical reasons. This class of error always has a reason ... and once we know that reason, somebody can fix it. MGD

What I experienced was during rapid ( 1 per second) or full 8.3 frames per/sec for 10 frames or so. that I would get a Card failure error message and the camera would freeze up to the point that I would have to remove the battery to re boot the camera (canon 1d mkII). When I got home I would have to manually down load the files a small group at a time until I found the the files that were corrupt delete those files and down load the rest. I have formatted and defragged them on the computer (surface scan) then put them in the camera and reformatted them in the camera. I have never had this problem with a card only with the micro-drives. I do not the the drives any more they were green 2.2 gig (ultra store) maybe. It had occurred with all firmware upgrades of my camera.

I can only say that I use two 4 Gigs CFs and two 8 Gigs Microdrives and they work fine with my camera.

Chris P.S. A one gig card would only hold 39 Images and that's far not enough ...

Message edited on: 10/02/2005 11:09

Attached Link: Pexagon Technology: Hitachi Micrododrive Digital Camera Compatibility

@Randys Thanks for the detail info My good buddy Google couldn't find a microdrive identified as "green 2.2 gig (ultra store)" (I tried various combinations of search terms) ... and you did say "maybe". I wandered through the Canon web site but found limited references to microdrive WRT cameras -- plenty of references to microdrive and printers (I wonder how they think the images get onto the microdrives?). The Canon web site does specifically mention (occasionally) compatibility with IBM (now Hitachi) 1G microdrives. I found a site (Pexagon) that had a microdrive vs. camera compatibility list -- but only for Hitachi, not the one you had. As a point of reference, note that some Canon models (but not the one you have) do not support drives that would require the use of FAT-32. For that matter, I'm not sure if a 2.2GB drive is large enough that it must use FAT-32. The Pexagon Technology Media Information page http://www.pexagontech.com/mdmediainfo.htm does state "Hitachi Microdrive Digital Media offers high-capacity, removable storage in a standard CompactFlash Type II format. With a media transfer rate of up to 15MB per second ..." That suggests that some RAM buffering is happening in the Hitachi CF device ... it might even be a feature that is unique to the Hitachi microdrives. That would be something to double check (RAM buffer and/or sustained transfer rate) WRT the microdrive products that failed in your camera. It is possible that when your microdrive devices ran out of buffer space (internal to the CF), the camera body detected a timeout condition and gave you an error message. HTH but YMMV -- in fact, Your Mileage Did Vary. LOL MGD