CompactFlash Card Advice
 

Dear Friends,

We recommend the following when purchasing new CompactFlash cards.

1. Purchase only the recommended cards. Not all cards are created equal and many are not fast enough to be used with the Flash XDR. Purchase from reputable dealers only to avoid counterfeit cards.

2. Upon receipt, initialize all of your new cards in the Flash XDR or the upcoming nanoFlash.

This simple procedure will test the new cards, ensuring that they work and that they work in the Flash XDR. If the Flash XDR reports an error, then the card or cards cannot be used for recording.

It is best to ensure that you cards are ok, prior to the date that you actually need them.

If the Flash XDR does detect an error, please call us and we will advise you.

Hi Dan
You guys seem to plugging along quite well. I had asked about the CF cards you guys are testing and you answered the question but I recently went to your site and could not find anywhere a list of qualified CF Cards. Do you guys plan on putting that up some where on the site in the future? Just by reading bits here and there I surmised that you guys have qualified Kinsington, Sandisk and Transcend cards, although the Transcend cards are in the doghouse at the moment due to OSX.5 issues.

Thanks

Dear Robert,

I really like the way you worded that.

We have qualified the Transcend 16 GB 300x card, the Transcend 32 GB 133x card, the SanDisk Extreme III and IV cards in 16 GB and 32 GB sizes, and the Kingston 32 GB Elite Pro card (with the S2 designation).

At this time, we recommend the Kingston 32 GB Elite Pro. This is mainly due to the fact that the Apple Leopard operating system has a problem with the Transcend cards.

In fact, at this time, we do not recommend any Transcend card be plugged into a card reader, of any type, attached to a Mac Leopard. Please note that we do this all of the time for testing of the Transcend Cards with Mac Leopard. We can not get the cards to fail.

If the Transcend cards are used with Mac Leopard, please just manually remove the card from the card reader without using the Eject command or dragging and dropping the card reader icon to the trash can.

Please note that it may turn out that the Transcend cards are completely blameless. As far as we know, no user of Tiger has ever had a problem with these cards, nor has any PC user.

On the other side, we are only starting to use the Kingston cards. We have over 20 of the cards ourselves and others are starting to use them.

We did have a report of one user that purchased a Kingston card from a reputable source, but the card did not work. It would not initialize, so it could not be used for recording.

We physically examined the controller chip on the inside of the card and found it to be different than expected. We contacted Kingston and they are promptly replacing the card. Please note that this card failed when tested in other computer systems, it was just a bad card.

Thus, we now recommend that everyone test their cards as soon as they receive them. If they initialize in the Flash XDR without errors, then we feel that they are ok.