No more "fixed" CompactFlash being made?

[Luc]

The supplier we get our CF's from has warned us that in a matter of months,
CompactFlash flagged or flagable 'fixed' to the OS (as opposed to
removable) will no longer be manufactured.

He can provide us with another device from a different manufacturer after
stock runs out, but that would only be a temporary solution (for the same
reason).

The only alternative would be to switch from CF to solid state disks (at a
per-device cost that's a multiple).


I haven't been following the news too closely, so now I have two questions:

1) How much of what he's telling us is true?

2) Has anything changed at the software side that makes it possible to use
XP with EWF enabled on a CompactFlash with the configuration bit set to
"removable"? Hasn't anyone found a clever hack to make it work?

 

[Luc]

I have no idea; but from the beginning we were "fixing" our CFs by
ourselves Sandisk, and a little command shell tool...

Yes, and (according to our supplier) that's the problem: all new Sandisks
you will be receiving in a few months won't be "fixable" anymore.

That tool you're using now will simply not recognize the new devices.


We used to have ours shipped to us "pre-fixed", and they're stopping that
too.


Allegedly, it's because of new firmware for the built-in microcontroller
that handles things like wear levelling etc. A new version was necessary
to support larger capacities, and in it they dropped support for changing
the fixed/removable bit.

 

[Luc]

Could you tell us which manufacturers you have been using and have been
offered as an alternative? That way we may be able to make some
alternate suggestions!

What we used: mostly Sandisk (Ultra II and some 5000 series). There were
some SimpleTech too in early stages of the project, but I don't know if
those were ever used in production.

Alternative offered: Cactus Technologies (some outfit from Hong Kong, I had
never heard of them before).

 

[Sean Liming \(MVP\)]

If this is SanDisk, it is no surprise. They seem to bounce back and forth in
support for embedded systems.

WinSystems, Transcend, and SiliconSystems all offer fixed drive solutions -
http://www.seanliming.com/flashhelp.html

You can use EWF with RAM-REG mode, which eliminates the need for a second
partition.
--
Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental Toolkit

 

[Luc]

You can use EWF with RAM-REG mode, which eliminates the need for a second
partition.

AH - Digging a bit deeper on that I see that there's something I didn't
know. I thought all kinds of EWF always required fixed disks.

RAM REG wasn't a choice initially, but I switched to it when it was added
(with SP2 or something like that).

So I don't need fixed CF's anymore...

 

[Sean Liming \(MVP\)]

RAM-REG was always possible, but there was a manual work around to get it
enabled. An option was added when FP2007 came out.


Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental Toolkit

 

[Luc]

RAM-REG was always possible, but there was a manual work around to get it
enabled. An option was added when FP2007 came out.

Yes, I remember. Wasn't it Slobodan Brcin who sort of "invented" it?

But I don't remember ever hearing that it didn't require "fixed" disks back
then, I always thought the EWF system simply refused to work on removable
ones.

 

[Sean Liming \(MVP\)]

Yes, it was Slobodan who found the best work around.

As far as removable, I guess RAM-REG just implied a solution.

--
Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental Toolkit