[OM] Re: Ornery mood

[Mark Dapoz]

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006, Chuck Norcutt wrote:

> Interesting.  Is it possible then that some sectors could be locked but
> still appear as free space which the camera then interprets as a locked
> drive becuase it can't write to what it thinks is unallocated space?

The flash chip sectors have nothing to do with the file system (DOS) sectors
which the camera/computer sees.  There's a layer of software between the
flash chips and DOS called a flash translation layer (FTL) which provides
the required mapping and also handles sector wear leveling.  That's one
of the things the microcontroller in the CF cards does and it would be
the only one that can lock the flash chips.  There may be a command which
can be sent to the microcontroller by the camera to do the locking, but
I have no idea if such a command exists.
                                                -mark

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