CF card reading full, help?

[Sheena]

Hiya guys. Here's a little problem...
My iPaq 2210 is reading my 1GB CF card as full (or almost full) when it's not. The first time I got the warning that a new file couldn't be saved for lack of space, I took it to the PC & found it had only about 800K used. I deleted some seldom used mp3's & brought it down to less than 600K, but the iPaq still reads it as less than 2% available. The card reads well, with no other errors or bad areas & I just defragmented it too. Any ideas?
Many thanks.

Rosie

[applejosh]

I sometimes come across that with my SD cards, but usually an eject and re-insert fixes it. Were you doing the defrag/chkdsk via a card reader and PC, or were you using a Pocket PC utility program? (I'd recommend the former.)

[Sheena]

I sometimes come across that with my SD cards, but usually an eject and re-insert fixes it. Were you doing the defrag/chkdsk via a card reader and PC, or were you using a Pocket PC utility program? (I'd recommend the former.)
Thanks, Josh. I've ejected & re-inserted the card several times, always with the same result, ditto with a soft-reset or two. I ran the utilities from the PC (on XP) using a USB card reader. As I mentioned before, no errors were found or any other problems using the card. I have another card reader at work (W2K) & works the same as at home, only the iPaq seems unable to reset the available space.

Rosie

[applejosh]

Beats me then. Do other CF cards work as expected in the iPAQ?

[GSmith]

I had a CF card that "read" as full in my Pocket PC. I did not test to see how it was "perceived" in other devices. Copy all files from it, format the card, the copy all files back to it and see if it reads correctly. You should be able to test it just after the format to see if your devices see it as the correct XX amount "free".

I did this on a desktop PC with a card reader and it worked and read correctly in my Pocket PC after that.

Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - Pocket PC RSS *direct* text, audio, video, podcasts
www.FeederReader.com - Download on the Road

[Sheena]

:D Success!
Thanks, Josh & Greg, for your input. I didn't get as far as reformatting the card, but I sort of tricked it out & it worked. Here's how, in case anyone else has this problem: Since the iPaq said the card was 98% full, I copied (on the PC) a bunch of big files, added about 300K. When I placed the card back in the iPaq, it read it ok, then I deleted those files in the iPaq itself. Now I'm back to reading the 580K that it actually has.
Again, thanks fellas!

Rosie

PS: Can anyone rec a good replacement for MS' crummy file manager? I've seen a few on Handango, but haven't researched pro's & con's yet. 10Q

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Resco's supposed to be the best, with almost any features you could want, including registry editor, network shares, *.zip compatibility, file encryption and ftp client:

http://www.resco.net/pocketpc/explorer/default.asp

For a decent freeware alternative, I would recommend GSFinder+ (which I'm using). It doesn't have all the features of Resco, but comes pretty close:

http://page.freett.com/todamitsu/GSFinderE.htm

HTH

[yankeejeep]

Something that can create issues with a card is the limit (128?) of items that can reside at the root level (that includes files and folders). If you have an incorrect availability issue, check to see if the root level is full. Moving items off the root level into a folder can solve the problem if this is the issue.

[Sheena]

Hiya.

HTH, thanks for the rec's. I'll try the freebie first since I don't need too many fancy whistles, just a decent search feature & a couple more niceties would do.

yankeejeep, I have hardly any files & just about a dozen directories in the root directory, so no trouble there. The sub-directories & sub-sub are legion though! Didn't even know there was a limitation, so thanks for the tip.

Rosie

[cml]

I've never used Resco, but many say it is very good. I've always used Total Commander ( http://www.ghisler.com/pocketpc.htm ) and found it excellent. It is also free.