CF Cards Size Limits for Canon 20D

Hello

This is my first post-- looks like an awesome site.

I am using a 4 GB CF card in my 20D. However, the camera will only allow the card to fill to about 2 GB before flashing a message that it is "CF FULL."

Is there a setting somewhere allows card to be used to its full potential?

Thanks

What make and model of card, and where did you get it?

You probably formatted the card as FAT16 somewhere or else got a bad card. My 20D does fine with 4 GB cards. Older cards had a switch to restrict them to 2 GB; you might look for that as well.

Hello

It's a "San Disk 4.0 GB" that I bought new with the camera in Fall of 2005.

On the back of the Disk, there's a two half-moon shaped symbols that are reversed from one another and both have 2GB values.

There is also a full-moon shape for 4GB. All three symbols have their own corner of the disk and have short lines that point to the edge of the disk. These must mean something, but I don't see anything that looks like a switch.

Does this make any sense to you?

Have you tried to format in the camera?

4gb cards work fine in my old 20D too.

I found the switch, tiny thing hid inside. I reformatted and things look good.

So will any size of CF card work with the 20D-- even the 16GB?

Thanks all for your help.

I have no idea. I only have 4gb cards. I have 16gb total and I really don't need anymore for my purposes so I'm not in the market for a large card to try it out. Also that much memory would encourage me to shoot too much. I already have enough trouble going through 3k shots per race day.

It probably won't format a full 16 GB; up until the latest firmware release the 5D could only go up to 8 GB. So I'd stay no larger than 8. Even shooting RAW, that's a lot of photos.

If a camera supports fat32, the only technological limit is the Filesystem (FAT32) and the card (CF). The FAT32 limit is 8Terabytes. The CompactFlash format's limit is 137GB. Other limits are bugs.

Yup, my 8gig cards work fine in the 20D.