CF reader Microdrive

[petiot]

Hi

Can anyone tell me why i can read but cant write on a microdrive using a CF sandisk card reader?

is there any CF reader that can write on Microdrive?

if not, is there any connection cbale with a USB male on one side and a PCMCIA on the other??

thank you

[oops]

If your card reader can format or erase the drive as well as read information it would seem it is actually writing to the card, right?

How about the file system? If the card is formatted fat for the camera but your computer is trying to write fat32 the card will not accept it. At least the reverse is true for my D30. If I forget and format the microdrive with the default fat32 on my computer, my D30 acts as if it has no card.

Chris

[petiot]

Hi Chris.

Thank you for your answer. I never thought about the file system actually, i natuarally assumed that windows was able to deal with any fat system file.

However i will try that, it might work. I thank you anyway for your advice, and i ll tell you if it works

[reittila]

oops wrote:
If your card reader can format or erase the drive as well as read information it would seem it is actually writing to the card, right?

How about the file system? If the card is formatted fat for the camera but your computer is trying to write fat32 the card will not accept it. At least the reverse is true for my D30. If I forget and format the microdrive with the default fat32 on my computer, my D30 acts as if it has no card.

Chris

File systems like FAT32 and NTFS are backwards compatible with FAT16 and FAT12 but not the other way round. This means that a CF card or microdrive formatted in the camera should be rewritable with operating systems with FAT32 or higher.
Check that your CF reader is compatible with IBM Microdive.
Although the reader might be compatible with CF II type it's not necessary compatible with microdrives which have some IBM specific features.

[adrianweller]

My PC has NTFS and my laptop has Fat32 and my CF cards and IBM Microdrive just worked out of the boxes without any formatting in my D60 and on both computers, whether I was using a Jessops Card reader on both machines or the PC card adapter in the laptop.
Reading, writing, deleting or whatever. The laptop has USB2 ports too but again no problems.

I did have to downlaod the XP driver from Jessop's website first but then it worked fine.

I wondered if the different file systems might give me problems but I've used the cards and microdrive for transferring Word and Excel files as well as images. It all seems to be the same so far.

I used to know what the difference between the file systems was but since it has never caused me any problems I've not thought much about it recently.

[adrianweller]

Further to my previous reply just now I remember I had to copy the files to the Microdrive via Windows Explorer by first opening the folder, 'selecting all files' and then just doing a block drag and drop to the Microdive Drive Letter on the tree. If I just tried to drag and drop the folder itself it stopped at the first file and gave out some message like it couldn't open the file or recognise it or whatever. But when I tried to copy just that same individual file itself or all the files at once after opening the folder (as above) then it was fine. There must be something in the Folder Properties that doesn't apply to the files in the folder I guess to give this although I don't seem to recall having this problem when copying similar folders to a CD which I've previously formatted for drag and drop using Roxio.

[petiot]

Well. Thank you all for all those answers

I have myself tried many things:

After re-insalling the driver, i could write on the Microdrive, but ocasionnaly i have an error message that appears!! still dont know why it happens sometime.
(I/O Error on mass storage system)

First, as adrianweller said, drag and drop entire folder causes an error message in my case as well, so it is better to copy past via the menu.

I contact Sandisk Support and asked them if they CF reader supports the Microdrives. The Answer is no, and they warn me that it might damage either the microdrive or the reader (??)

So, if anyone want a microdrive (Iomega 340 MB, for 80£ with case, box, everything), i will go back to traditionnal CF card i think. In addition, microdrive drain battery much more than traditionnal CF card, and are not faster so...

Thank you

Bye