Can the Dell X51v handle more than a 2.0G b type 2 CompFlash?

[DeBary_FL]

I cannot confirm anything that DeBary is saying.

When I bought my Axim x51v in December 2005, I bought a 6GB microdrive that has been permanent addition to the PDA except for very brief moments.

I use my Axim with CF as a sort of iPod so I put all of my music on it. I also have all of my pictures on it and any time I take pics I upload them onto the CF. I also have a few programs that I have installed on it. I also use MobSync and synchronize work/personal files between home and work every single day. Whenever I go on plane trips I copy a 500MB OGM movie to watch on it. I would classify this as heavy usage of my CF drive. I have used this since the beginning, so it has been used under A01, A04 and A12 roms. In the last year of daily use I have not experienced a single corruption.

To add to the evidence, when I bought my PDA my friend decided to buy one with a CF microdrive from a different company (I think seagate? Mine is Hitachi). He has been using his Axim for only a couple months less than myself with a large microdrive and has not had any issues with corruption. He still has issues with CF dissapear and Wi-Fi crashes but I've been telling him to upgrade from A04 to A12, but he's been holding off on that -- otherwise no issues at all.

I understand that DeBary is knowledgable and has done a lot of research on this and that he is having problems, but I am surprised, and my guess is that this is not commonplace.

If I read you correctly you're talking about a CF MICRODRIVE. I'm just talking about solid-state CF cards.

Tom

[gillius]

Hmm sorry, I didn't notice it was about solid-state cards... But then now I am interested: why would solid-state cards be any different, if both cards are obeying the same protocol and are used and accessed in the same way?

I have been using Seagate 4gb and 8gb cf microdrives on my x50v for 6 months with no issues. Make sure the seagate microdrives are the orange and specify photo hard drive! There is another version of the seagate microdrive that people have had problems with.

[DeBary_FL]

Hmm sorry, I didn't notice it was about solid-state cards... But then now I am interested: why would solid-state cards be any different, if both cards are obeying the same protocol and are used and accessed in the same way?

I'm by no means an expert here, but they are in fact not accessed the same way. While an electric current is used to write/read data with both, microdrives are mechanical. They have to spin up and down just like the hard drive in your PC. The data is read from and written to the spinning disk in the microdrive. Solid-state cards have no moving parts, use no power for stand-by, idle, and spin-up as do microdrives, and use less power than do microdrives for read/write operations.

If you're interested in power consumption comparisons between microdrives and solid-state cards you might want to take a look at this post.

Sorry I can't give you more info on how these things work, but that's about the extent of my technical knowledge of these things. I have, however, had a lot of practical experience using these things, and that's all I can report on. As I said earlier, YMMV. :)

Have a good one.

Tom

[gillius]

Everything you said is true (or close enough to true) but I don't see how any of that is relevant regarding corruption?

My question about access had to do from the viewpoint of the PDA -- if the protocols are the same then a microdrive and solid state CF look the same, sans power draw and different performance characteristics. Neither increased power draw or different performance should affect whether or not the drive works correctly at all, and that is my point here.

[c1oudrs]

I have an 8gb Sandisk extreme III cf and a 2gb Sandisk extreme III sd about 1 1/2 months old. I haven't had any problems with x51v A12 rom so far. A couple years ago I had a software issue with an early version of Vito sound explorer that corrupted data on cards on an ipaq.

[DeBary_FL]

Everything you said is true (or close enough to true) but I don't see how any of that is relevant regarding corruption?

My question about access had to do from the viewpoint of the PDA -- if the protocols are the same then a microdrive and solid state CF look the same, sans power draw and different performance characteristics. Neither increased power draw or different performance should affect whether or not the drive works correctly at all, and that is my point here.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the protocols are the same." Solid-state CF cards and microdrives don't work the same. Try a Google search if you're interested in the details. As I said, I'm reporting my results with solid-state CF cards, which is what the original poster was asking about (at least he/she didn't mention microdrives). As an experiment, why don't you buy or borrow a few high-capacity solid-state CF cards, test them each for a couple of weeks, then let us know if they work for you? ;) I for one would certainly be interested in your results.

Also, I curious about the "or close enough to true" comment. What exactly are you referring to? I'm a scientist, and "close" isn't good enough for me. If I've said something that isn't correct please let me know and I'll double-check my facts. :)

Tom

[DeBary_FL]

I have an 8gb Sandisk extreme III cf and a 2gb Sandisk extreme III sd about 1 1/2 months old. I haven't had any problems with x51v A12 rom so far. A couple years ago I had a software issue with an early version of Vito sound explorer that corrupted data on cards on an ipaq.

Thanks for the info. I haven't tried the Sandisk 8GB Extreme III CF card. I'll try to get my hands on one and test it. All 2GB CF cards I've tried have worked fine in my PPCs.

Tom

[ThundaAx]

I have a 4 gb Sandisk CF for my X51V. I've owned it for about 10 months now. It stays permanently inserted in my Axim. I have never had any issues with it whatsoever, including disappearing CF card or missing files/corruption. One thing that I may be doing differently is I store data only on the card - I do not store programs there.

[DeBary_FL]

I see that ROM A12 includes several CF fixes. My X51v was bought directly from Dell after the A12 update was released. It has ROM A11, which a Dell tech rep told me was identical to A12. Since Dell tech reps aren't known for their knowledge of what's actually going on I'm going to bite the bullet and attempt to install A12. I'll get back to ya'll on whether it helps my high-capacity CF problems with my Axim - if I still have a working Axim, that is! ;)

Tom

[gerizam60]

Hello to all,

This has to be one of the best Forums I ever joined so far.

Lots of experienced PDA users out there.

My sincere thanx to DeBary_FL for getting my thread warmed up and cruising. :approve:

I'm very interested in the whole "Microdrive vs. solid state card" deal.

I have a general idea of the technical mechanical differences between the two.

I'll do my home work as far as Pros & cons between the two.

But,
I would like to hear from anyone, your opinions of which is prefered, reliabilities, cost, practical uses, pros/cons, ETC.

Fire away people, lets get this thread smokin'.

[DeBary_FL]

Hello to all,

This has to be one of the best Forums I ever joined so far.

Lots of experienced PDA users out there.

My sincere thanx to DeBary_FL for getting my thread warmed up and cruising. :approve:

I'm very interested in the whole "Microdrive vs. solid state card" deal.

I have a general idea of the technical mechanical differences between the two.

I'll do my home work as far as Pros & cons between the two.

But,
I would like to hear from anyone, your opinions of which is prefered, reliabilities, cost, practical uses, pros/cons, ETC.

Fire away people, lets get this thread smokin'.

Try this Wikipedia entry for info, including advantages and disadvantages of microdrives. There's a link to similar info for CF cards at the bottom of that page.

By the way, I've installed ROM A12 successfully on my X51v and will start testing the CF cards again when I get time.

Tom

[gillius]

By Protocol I mean the way that the PDA communicates with the device. As far as I know they should look the same to the PDA. Therefore, I can't understand why one would work but not the other given that they implement the same protocol.

[DeBary_FL]

By the way, I've installed ROM A12 successfully on my X51v and will start testing the CF cards again when I get time.

Updating the rom to A12 didn't help. My first test, with an Intron 80x 8GB CF card, was to try copying a 200MB movie from my SD card to the newly formatted CF card in my X51v. Half-way through the transfer I got a "device full" message for the CF card. Resco Explored showed it had well over 7GB of free space. I tried transferring the same file to an Intron 2GB CF card with just 230MB free space. It transferred and played fine.

Next I placed the CF card in my laptop's card reader, re-formatted it for good measure, then copied a few movies onto it. Before removing the card I tried the movie files and they played fine on the laptop. I placed it in my X51v, started one of the movies using TCPMP and it played - for about 10 seconds. I looked into the movie directory with Resco Explorer and all the files there were corrupted.

This is going to be the extent of my testing these things. Again, these are MY results with MY PPCs and MY solid-state CF cards. I can't extrapolate my results to microdrives because I haven't tested them. If you want to try high-capacity CF cards in your PPC I'd suggest buying them from somewhere you can return or exchange them in case they don't work in YOUR PPC.

[Box]

My 8gb cf works perfectly and has done so from day one. Perhaps you have a problem with active sync. Maybe you should try using card export.