Compact Flash or Microdrive

I am thinking of getting a high capacity storage card. Should I buy CF or Microdrive?

Will the 4GB or the 8GB CF card work on a MP900 and J720? And will the 5GB Seagate microdrive work on these two machines?

I have read somewhere that these stroage cards have to be FAT16? Is that true? What happens if its FAT32?

Thx.

I dont know about max capacity that the devices can handle, but here are some answers


fat16 only goes to 2gb, so the cards will have to be fat32.
My 512cf works fine as fat32, so I asume the rest will also work.

the difference between cf and microdrive is mainly speed and powerusage.
microdrives tend to be faster, but due to moving parts it draisn more power. Some programs do offer a microdrivemode (betaplayer for example) that basicaly buffers into memory, then powers down the drive, and when buffer is low, powers the drive backup and on and on.

cf/sd are memory based, and thus do not require power to keep the drive spinning.
However, read/write tends to be slower then microdrives.

Depends on what you're doing - as CF cards have no disk heads they have no seek time, but as PocketDVD says the MD can make up for this with caching / read ahead for large files.

There is als the shock aspect to consider with battery performance.

Anything based on CE 2.11 and above will support FAT32 fully.

In J720, u can even put a MD in the bottom slot. although you'll have to remove the slot's cover and have it fixed with tape or something. And it'll work!!

Will that work for a Jornada 680 (i know wrong forum)...

i got one 4G hitachi microdrive since 2003 it works fine both on an PocketPC hp2210 and jornada 728. no problem it is recognised as a drive a once.. You may plug it into the pmcia slot thanks to an adapter (type CFII).

it allows to take several video DVD (avi full quality is about 800Mo or so) .
Fine indeed and you spare money since you wont buy every three months the last release of max capacity CF...

www

Given the current state of storage, I'd personally buy a large capacity CF card if the prices were equal. I'm always leery about moving parts in a machine like a hpc, by its very nature, it's bound to be bumped around and jostled a fair bit by the average user. But I'm not the average user and I treat my babies like babies. I also worry about the effects of altitude on drives, something the average person is unconcerned with.

However, if/when the lateral microdrives (I read 20-30gb?) appear cheaply enough(<$200) I'd buy myself a pair of them. One for main use and a backup. By then though we might have 16-32gb flash cards for a reasonable price. It will be a tough decision.

Isn't it wild to think that in a short while our lowly CE devices might have 20gb+ of mass storage? When they do that will strip away a huge advantage that laptops now enjoy.

Whatever you choose, make sure you have a USB 2 cardreader on your desktop. I wouldn't want to try loading a 4gb microdrive over wifi or AS for that matter.

Would taking a microdrive into a plane affect it? It is so small...

I plan to take C:Amie's advice, and try to design my own case out of acrylic. If I could design it, production would be so easy, as Tap Plastics is literally down the block...

I guess altitude would affect a microdrive to some extent. I don't know how much though. My concern is condensation as you drop through different air density layers and temperatures. When flying, better safe than sorry

Flying in a comercial jet won't effect electronics unless they can't stand being at 8000 feet. With presurized cabins it feels like its 8000 feet or so. Unless you're in a smaller private aircraft that isn't preasurized you shouldn't have a problem. Even then most electronics can take 30,000 feet...I think.
Cargo holds on some aircraft are not preasurized though, so leaving them in a checked bag might not be a good idea.

Humans can't go higher than about 15,000 feet without needing oxygen (according to the FAA). I'd assume electronics companies might try and get near that mark considering nobody goes above that altitude without oxygen tanks.

Dont worry about "altitude" or others parameters ( position, plane, etc...) I use my Hitachi 4G since nearly 3 years with no problem at all
by plane it works fine
it is very fast (faster i think than my 1G CF and sd)

I understand it is difficult to make up once mind to a microdrive but i think it is the future for these machines which definitively needs memory to have enough freedom with softwares and all files you need ( music, video,...)

It's a simple game to take dvd and transform them to avi for instance the real problem is quality of the video if you compresse the video (to save memory...) then you will have poor stuff ... So Microdrive is the trick (by now...) I red somewhere the record was 16G but i am not sure

I have several external small drive these are very useful and amazing machines. The only problem is once you have played with them you will leave them at home or somewhere with all these wires and huge electric tranformers (which will be the stone ages of electronics in 2010...)

Dont argue on supposed "babie..." microdrives just get them and try to change your mind. The problem with babies is they need food Microdrives too. They will grow up fortunately

Since the 720 screen isn't the greatest you can take movies down to ~80MB and they still look okay. Still not the greatest but when all you have is a 512 it works wonders to have that many movies on that small of a card.