A Big CF Card

[Phil Aypee]

Hi.

Yesterday I got a 2 Gigabyte CompactFlash card, a Kingston Technologies Elite Pro, from Chris. Love (http://www.clove.co.uk) for my 5mx. It works, out of the box, in both my 5mxs. As Chris. said he’d try it I expected it to.

I will partition it this weekend, probably into 3 logical drives, in my PC and use EDU to format those partitions in the 5mx. I’ll post my success/failure here but it should work fine.

[marek]

Phil, if I may. Are you going to use Ranish Partition Manager (http://www.ranish.com/part/) to create partitions? If so, have you also considered formatting partitions with the same utility? I know RPM does not support custom formatting. It will, however, write valid information into the Boot Sectors of respective partitions. (You will be able to reformat your partitions latter with EDU according to your liking.)

If you just skip formatting on PC, RPM will presumably create valid Mater Boot Record (including the Partition Table) -- without touching Boot Sectors. EPOC File Server, on the other hand, apparently needs some valid information in the Boot Sector in order to 'recognise' a partition. If the Boot Sector is empty (or seriously screwed up), EPOC won't even 'see' the partition (which means, you will likely get an error 'Disk not present' or 'Disk corrupt'). As a result EDU (which seems to rely in this respect on the information from the EPOC File Server) will not even access the partition.

Correct me, friends, if I am wrong...

Marek

Ps.

Regarding terminology: MBR is the first sector of a CF (i.e. the first 512 bytes), whereas Boot Sector is the first sector of a given partition.

[MartinG]

Originally posted by marek
Phil, if I may. Are you going to use Ranish Partition Manager (http://www.ranish.com/part/) to create partitions?

Hi Marek,

Does RPM allow you to do this on CF cards (i.e. removable media) under Windows (2000, XP, etc.)?

Thanks,
Martin

[marek]

Hello Martin,

the answer is 'it depends' :)

RPM is a DOS app. You can run it under Win 95/98/ME "in DOS mode". (That's what I've done.) If you have Win NT/2000/XP -- the solution might be to launch your computer from a DOS floppy.

Another issue is to access the your CF card from RPM. If you have a laptop with a PCMCIA slot, it might be as simple as to plug in a CF to PCMCIA adapter. On the other hand, if you have a desktop with USB to CF adapter, it might be hard to impossible. (Normally, DOS does not support USB.)

Lastly, the CF accessibility might be dependent on a BIOS version -- if RPM is using BIOS (rather then OS) to access a disk.

Otherwise, RPM seems to perform the trick.

HTH

Marek

[Phil Aypee]

Hi Marek,

Of course you may ask. ;)

I will use Ranish Partition Manager (http://www.ranish.com/part/), which I have tried using on a small CF I was given some time ago. I will format the partitions first with it and then use EDU.

I imagine the error no boot sector would generate would be “Disk corrupt” as I believe the “Disk not present” error is caused by hardware incompatibility.

[marek]

FYI -- another detail. EDU Smart Format is apparently unable to write into a Boot Sector correct CHS parameters (Cylinder, Sector, Head addressing). If you format a partition with Smart Format, and then inspect its Boot Sector with EDU Disk Editor, you will notice that it invariably reports 2 heads, 16 sectors per track -- regardless of the actual card geometry.

For EPOC it should make no difference at all, because the OS is only using Logical Block Addressing [1]. Since LBA convention is dominant these days, it might be also OK (more or less) for many other OSs. (Not sure about DOS -- which allegedly uses CHS mode only.)

I, for one, was able to read/write files under Windows from/to EDU formatted CF card without any issues. Windows Checkdisk, however, as well as Norton Disk Utilites have both complained somewhat about the card.

On the other hand, those Windows tools seemed perfectly happy with a CF partitioned and formatted with RPM. That's why I have decided to stick with the default RPM formatting parameters, as long as these seem acceptable.

Anyway, if compatibility with other OSs is not your concern, you can safely ignore those nuances -- and rely on EDU.

Best wishes

Marek

[1] Or so I believe. By the way, it might be also the reason why EDU seems CHS-blind. (The tool relies on EPOC with respect to CF queries.)

[The FD]

I will partition it this weekend

Excuse my ignorance but what is the advantage of partitioning a CF card? Why not just keep it as one whole storage unit?

[ohsix]

My ignorance, too. I've never understood why one would want partitions, even on PC.

I can understand why on a CF card larger than Psion can handle in order to be able to use the entire card. I have more stuff on my Psion 512MB than I really need (including every European country for RoutePlanner, and over 100 CityMap Europe cities), and it still takes up only 52% of the card.

On my PC I just added a 2nd hard drive to get a D drive.

Keith

[MartinG]

Well, the short answer is because you can gain speed and/or effective storage capacity (yes, really) by partitioning.

The long answer is here: Pscience5 CF Page (http://www.pscience5.net/CompactFlash.htm)

Martin

[marek]

Another point is that EPOC build-in file browser/selector generally slows down when the file system is crammed with too many items (i.e. files and folders). So you may like to parcel out your files into separate partitions, thus reducing the number of files and folders, the browser/selector has to deal with at once.

Best regards

Marek

[Jake]

I'm using a 128mb Viking CF card in my Series 5 without problem except for speed issues.

I'm loathe to reinstall all the d:\ programs just to see if I can increase access speed by a FAT change/partition.

Since I've backed the d:\ drive on my laptop, would it be possible to reformat the CF, then simply dump in the saved files from the laptop?

Yet the article referenced above cites "however, EPOC uses the standard MS-DOS formatting structures for CF cards (which is handy because it makes formatted cards interchangeable with PC card readers, most CF digital cameras, etc.)," so a new, speedier format may make the CF incompatible with a laptop's Windows' transfer.

Perplexed,
Jake

[MartinG]

Yet the article referenced above cites "however, EPOC uses the standard MS-DOS formatting structures for CF cards (which is handy because it makes formatted cards interchangeable with PC card readers, most CF digital cameras, etc.)," so a new, speedier format may make the CF incompatible with a laptop's Windows' transfer.

Potentially a risk I suppose, yes. But if you do the backup and restore via PsiWin then there's no risk because then you only need the Psion to be able to read the card, not the PC (although of course this is slower than backing up/restoring direct via a PCMCIA adapter, etc.).

I've formated CF cards in various ways in attempts to get the best performance and I've not yet managed to get one formatted such that my PC couldn't read it. That doesn't mean that it's not possible of course! ;)

Martin

[Jake]

Hi, Martin,

Thanks for a quick response. Yes, I could back up via PsiWin, but wow, the last time I tried, the wait time was listed at two hours, so I gave that a pass.

If you've used a Series 5 and a large CF card, have you found a format procedure that produced a significant change in speed?

The Series 5 is slow to begin with (even on the c: drive, when I click Control Panel, I have to wait several seconds), so I may be trying to tweak the untweakable.

Jake

[MartinG]

Thanks for a quick response. Yes, I could back up via PsiWin, but wow, the last time I tried, the wait time was listed at two hours, so I gave that a pass.
An excellent opportunity for going for lunch in my experience! ;)

If you've used a Series 5 and a large CF card, have you found a format procedure that produced a significant change in speed?
It's a matter of degree and payoff of speed v's utilisable capacity - there's no magic number IMO - only trial and error as to what's a good compromise on a case-by-case basis.

The Series 5 is slow to begin with (even on the c: drive, when I click Control Panel, I have to wait several seconds), so I may be trying to tweak the untweakable.
Yes, true. The slower processor on the 5 limits the bus speed that the CF slot uses. You need to conduct some tests and maybe graph the results so that you get a picture of where the diminishing returns kick in for your particular combination.

Martin

[Jake]

All right, I'll try it, perhaps formatting at FAT12, and see what that does.

Thanks for the advice,
Jake

[gelleal]

All right, I'll try it, perhaps formatting at FAT12, and see what that does.

Jake

To avoid some major problems, do not format CF using FAT12 and do not reserve more then 1 block!
This had been tested and discussed at MyPsion.ru.

Leonid (Leo)

[ohsix]

I may have misunderstook, Jake, but with your 2-hr+ backup were you letting PsiWin backup your D drive? That takes ages for me as I put almost everything on the CF card. Here's what I do. I have a PC program called Backup Platinum - it's from Siberia. :-) It can do incremental backups. The backup looks just like Explorer, you can double-click on any file and it'll open. I much prefer that type rather than those backup programs that create just 1 file for all the files backed up and I can't look at any particular file within it

I hope I'm making myself clear..

I just use a card reader then run that particular backup manually (whereas I've set all my non-Psion files to backup automatically once a day - easy). It took me about 20 minutes when I did the first Psion D drive backup, but only a minute or two after that.

Keith

[Jake]

Many thanks to you folks for your fast, thoughtful advice. Yes, Keith, PsiWin was telling me that it needed two hours to back up my 128 mb CF, so I passed and copied the files via PC Card reader directly to the laptop.

Leo, thank you for the warning about FAT12. I wish I spoke Russion as MyPsion.ru looks to be a wealth of information.

I was ready to try reformatting last night, staring at the EDU sis file on the c: drive, and I thought, you know, I'm going to screw this up. Sure, it takes ten seconds to load Web from the CF, but at least it loads. If I start playing with it--I have such bad luck with tweaking--it'll take hours to end up right where I started.

So I bailed out, and until I find news of the exact format specs to increase markedly the CF speed on a Series 5, I'm going to hold off. Also, the EDU sis file is almost 1/2 meg, and because of what the program does, it needs to be installed on the c: drive, and that's problematic for 8mb Series 5.

But I'm much obliged for your insights and warnings,
Jake