guide to compactflash specs, compatibilty (reason: older p&s)
in [Digital Cameras]
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From: invalid on 24 Sep 2009 02:46 i have a 512 mb card that's gone bad. canon tech says the s200 (aka ixus v2, 2003) takes up to 2 gb card, but wouldn't say why. and other comments had me doubt his advice on compatible card. searching about compactflash... found only minor mention of compactflash spec "revisions", but nothing about realworld significance, other than speed (but only by implication). looking up the camera model... a few spec pages in the original paper manual says only "type I" compactflash. the paper page resembles this: http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/IXUSv2/IXUSv2_spec-e.html also searched: *canon.com, canon.co.jp, canon-europe.com, canon.jp (as reference for future readers: http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0000488.asp) question: I wonder if there's a chart or guide on the net somewhere. (thanks)
From: Mike Russell on 24 Sep 2009 03:08 On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:46:38 -0500, invalid(a)com.invalid wrote: > i have a 512 mb card that's gone bad. This happens - take comfort in the face that a 2 GB card is 10 to 20 dollars on Amazon.com. > canon tech says the s200 (aka ixus v2, 2003) takes up to 2 gb card, but wouldn't say > why. and other comments had me doubt his advice on compatible card. One possibility is that the s200 uses the 16 bit FAT filesystem, which is limited to 2GB. If this is true, and you get a larger card, your camera may ignore the additional capacity. > searching about compactflash... > found only minor mention of compactflash spec "revisions", but nothing about > realworld significance, other than speed (but only by implication). The CF pinout is not related to the max size. > looking up the camera model... > a few spec pages in the original paper manual says only "type I" compactflash. the > paper page resembles this: > http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/IXUSv2/IXUSv2_spec-e.html Type I deals with the amount of power, and the thickness of the card. Capacity depends on the type of file system. > also searched: > *canon.com, canon.co.jp, canon-europe.com, canon.jp (as reference for future > readers: http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0000488.asp) > > question: > I wonder if there's a chart or guide on the net somewhere. This may shed some light: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table > (thanks) More than welcome. -- Mike Russell - http://www.curvemeister.com
From: invalid on 24 Sep 2009 05:17 24 Sep 2009,Mike Russell <groupsRE(a)MOVEcurvemeister.com> in news:9ky3yzssr164.dlg(a)mike.curvemeister.com: > On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:46:38 -0500, invalid(a)com.invalid wrote: > >> i have a 512 mb card that's gone bad. > > This happens - take comfort in the face that a 2 GB card is 10 to > 20 dollars on Amazon.com. > >> canon tech says the s200 (aka ixus v2, 2003) takes up to 2 gb >> card, but wouldn't say why. and other comments had me doubt his >> advice on compatible card. > > One possibility is that the s200 uses the 16 bit FAT filesystem, > which is limited to 2GB. If this is true, and you get a larger > card, your camera may ignore the additional capacity. "2gb" seems otherwise too coincidental. (-: it looks like 2gb cards sell at about the same price as 1gb, fine. $14-20 with tax and s&h. 4gb cost little more. with a larger card, i wonder if i could partition, and set one partition to "active" "primary" whatever. "hide" the other gb. then in a couple years, set another partition to be used. spread the wear n tear over the whole card. i've been wary of new cards, because the s200 was made when 300x did not exist (AFAIK). Perhaps speed differences are two-way compatible, so no worries? >> searching about compactflash... >> found only minor mention of compactflash spec "revisions", but >> nothing about realworld significance, other than speed (but only >> by implication). > > The CF pinout is not related to the max size. > >> looking up the camera model... >> a few spec pages in the original paper manual says only "type I" >> compactflash. the paper page resembles this: >> http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/IXUSv2/IXUSv2_spec-e.html > > Type I deals with the amount of power, and the thickness of the > card. (my impression is the thicker 5mm type II were always microdrives.) > Capacity depends on the type of file system. >> also searched: >> *canon.com, canon.co.jp, canon-europe.com, canon.jp (as >> reference for future >> readers: http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0000488.asp) >> >> question: >> I wonder if there's a chart or guide on the net somewhere. > > This may shed some light: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table 2gb limit pretty much implies newer cameras have been using other than fat16. in my searching, i read that fat32 writes a bit slower than fat16. (though newer harwdare and cards would overcome that.) >> (thanks) > > More than welcome. :-) i'm also going to try some recovery freeware to see if any of the last batch of shots is rettrievable.
From: J�rgen Exner on 24 Sep 2009 06:40 "invalid(a)com.invalid" <invalid(a)com.invalid> wrote: >i have a 512 mb card that's gone bad. >canon tech says the s200 (aka ixus v2, 2003) takes up to 2 gb card, What does the manual for your camera say? CF supports a max size of up to 137GB, although of course individual devices may have a lower limit for various reasons. >but wouldn't say >why. and other comments had me doubt his advice on compatible card. Maybe he is confusing CF and SD. The SD spec indeed limits the size to 2GB, only SDHC allows for up to 32GB and the brand new SDXC format finally for up to 2TB. >searching about compactflash... >found only minor mention of compactflash spec "revisions", but nothing about >realworld significance, other than speed (but only by implication). Yep. That's because the CF format was spec'ed so well that there really was no need for any major revision. >looking up the camera model... >a few spec pages in the original paper manual says only "type I" compactflash. Type I versus type II refers to the physical dimension of the card. Type I is 3.3mm thick while type II is 5mm thick, thus allowing more space for chips or even a microdrive. Except for this difference in thickness they are 100% identical and can be substituted for each other. It's just that the slot on your camera is only 3.3mm wide, therefore type II will not fit. There aren't many type II cards around anyway, that format was really mostly for microdrives. >paper page resembles this: >http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/IXUSv2/IXUSv2_spec-e.html >question: >I wonder if there's a chart or guide on the net somewhere. No need for, CF cards have no inherent size issues or limits.You should be able to use up to 2GB at least. This is a magical line where many old devices start to have issues, be it from the file system used (no support for FAT32) or other reasons. But even with larger cards at most you may have wasted some money because the camera may not know how to use all of that memory and ignore the surplus. After all, CF is not like SD, where the 2GB line is imposed by the spec and larger cards are incompatible with the original devices. jue
From: ray on 24 Sep 2009 11:50
On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:46:38 -0500, invalid(a)com.invalid wrote: > i have a 512 mb card that's gone bad. canon tech says the s200 (aka ixus > v2, 2003) takes up to 2 gb card, but wouldn't say why. and other > comments had me doubt his advice on compatible card. > > searching about compactflash... > found only minor mention of compactflash spec "revisions", but nothing > about realworld significance, other than speed (but only by > implication). > > > > looking up the camera model... > a few spec pages in the original paper manual says only "type I" > compactflash. the paper page resembles this: > http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/IXUSv2/IXUSv2_spec-e.html > > also searched: > *canon.com, canon.co.jp, canon-europe.com, canon.jp (as reference for > future > readers: http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0000488.asp) > > question: > I wonder if there's a chart or guide on the net somewhere. > > (thanks) See wikipedia article on compact flash cards - excerpt: ========================= Capacities and compatibility Since flash memory is generally produced in capacities that are multiples of powers of 2, IEC standard binary prefixes are used throughout this article. As of 2008[update], CompactFlash cards are generally available in capacities from about 512 MiB to 100 GiB, with perhaps the most popular choices in Europe and North America being between 1 GiB and 16 GiB. The CF Specification can support capacities up to 137 GB (128 GiB). Lower capacity cards, below 512 MiB, are becoming rare in stores as higher capacity cards are readily available at the same price. The largest CompactFlash cards commonly available currently are the 64 GiB models from various manufacturers — SanDisk launched its 16 GiB Extreme III card at the 2006 Photokina trade fair, Transcend announced its 32 GiB card on January 15, 2008.[6] Samsung launched 16, 32 and 64 GiB CF cards soon after. Pretec announced 48 GiB cards in January 2008 and 100GB cards in September.[7][8][9] Pretec, Transcend and Sandisk introduced 64 GiB cards in August/September 2009. These cards, and almost all cards over 2 GiB, require that the host device support the FAT32 file system (if the camera is using a FAT file system). The largest cards, however, are usually not the fastest. [edit] Filesystems There are varying levels of compatibility among FAT32-compatible cameras. While any camera that claims FAT32-capabilty should read and write to a FAT32-formatted card without problems, some cameras are tripped up by cards larger than 2 GB that are completely unformatted, while others may take longer to apply a FAT32 format. The way many digital cameras update the files system as they write to the card creates a FAT32 bottleneck. Writing to a FAT32-formatted card generally takes a little longer than writing to a FAT16-formatted card with similar performance capabilities. For instance, the Canon EOS 10D writes the same photo to a FAT16-formatted 2 GiB CompactFlash card somewhat faster than to a same speed 4 GiB FAT32-formatted CompactFlash card, although the memory chips in both cards have the same write speed specification.[10] The cards themselves can of course be formatted with any type of file system such as JFS and can be divided into partitions as long as the host device can read them. CompactFlash cards are often used instead of hard drives in embedded systems, dumb terminals and various small form-factor PCs that are built for low noise output or power consumption. CompactFlash cards are often more readily available and smaller than purpose-built solid-state drives and can be used to obtain faster seek times than hard drives. =============================================== Bottom line is - if the camera knows fat-32 it will handle larger cards. If not there is a 2gb (or possibly 4gb - depending on implementation) imposed by fat-16 file system. Please note, too, that cards can easily be reformatted to whatever file system you choose. I've done this in the past - using Linux file systems. |