> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chuck Norcutt []
> Sent: Wednesday, 1 April 2009 10:35 AM
> To: Olympus Camera Discussion
> Subject: Re: [OM] Strange CF Card behaviour
>
> I just tried this myself using a 1GB CF card on WinXP. The default
> format chosen by Windows was FAT16. That's what I would have expected.
> It was showing FAT32 as an option but NTFS was not shown as a format
> option for this device. That's not surprising either for a small flash
> card. NTFS was specifically designed to minimize seek times on
> rotating
> disks by placing the directory structure at the middle of the data
> area.
> It's a B-tree system and has lots of formatting structural overhead
> which is probably a bit much for a small, electronic "disk".
Tried this myself with the same result
>
> I then allowed XP to actually do a full format (quick format was not
> the
> default). I didn't time it but the formatting time was quite
> noticeable. The output device was a USB2 driven multi-card
> reader/writer. After formatting, the directory display, as expected,
> showed an empty "disk".
Yep, same here.
>From here down the E-510 doesn't play with this particular card.
I think I'll just ditch this card, no point wasting any more time on it.
>
> I then put the card into the Mynolta A1 which did nothing until I asked
> to see an image. At that point it immediately reported "no images". I
> then took a shot with the camera which worked fine. After removing the
> card and sticking it into the computer I could see that, before
> actually
> taking the shot, the camera had created the directory structure that
> would normally be found after an in-camera format. The image could be
> displayed on the computer as expected. Afterwards, I formatted the
> card
> in the camara which proceeded much more quickly than in the computer.
> That may well have indicated a quick format. Or, maybe just a "smart"
> format. Maybe it doesn't go beyond the data extent indicated by the
> directory. I just made that up but consider it possible.
>
> So, in all of this testing there was only one surprise and that was
> rather mild. I expected the camera to complain when I tried to take a
> shot and it discovered that its expected directory structure wasn't on
> the card. It just did the logical thing. Create the directory
> structure before stashing the image.
>
> If anything, my Mynolta behaves a bit better and smarter than I
> expected. I can't say why Oly doesn't behave the same way. Too bad
> you
> don't have another non-Oly camera to try it out elsewhere.
>
Yeah, the only other alternatives use SD or Smartmedia, oh, and the Kodak
DCS-330 which has a PCMCIA slot and can use a CF with an adapter.
...Wayne
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