... Anyway the point is Hold your horses folks! It may very well be 6GB in capacity. Just don't expect to automatically be able to access all of that on PPC's at least. Unles someone knows for sure that PPCs can.
Well, by the time this gets to an affordable range, we may have a solution!!
For now, with the cost of this card, you could probably put an entire down payment on a brand new car.
I somehow am skeptical of this till I see this product come out in reality. Why? Because 6GB means that you are crossing the 4GB 32 bit barrier. Now for filesystems thats no big deal since they can access things using 64 bit int's but if Flash is accessed anything like memory it would need 64 bit pointers which a lot of CPU's don't support. Okay maybe flash is always used as filesystem like only then you'd only need 64 bit integers.
What on earth are you talking about? There are already 5GB PC cards on the market, which use the same interface as CF. People have hooked up units as large as 20GB, as well. Flash cards are definitely mass storage devices and not general purpose memory items.
As for the filesystem, the card would use FAT32, which easily handles much larger than 4GB. WinCE 3.0, moreover, has full support for FAT32. The fact that WinZip has a 4GB file limitation has nothing to do with anything, either.
I somehow am skeptical of this till I see this product come out in reality. Why? Because 6GB means that you are crossing the 4GB 32 bit barrier. Now for filesystems thats no big deal since they can access things using 64 bit int's but if Flash is accessed anything like memory it would need 64 bit pointers which a lot of CPU's don't support. Okay maybe flash is always used as filesystem like only then you'd only need 64 bit integers.
What on earth are you talking about? There are already 5GB PC cards on the market, which use the same interface as CF. People have hooked up units as large as 20GB, as well. Flash cards are definitely mass storage devices and not general purpose memory items.
As for the filesystem, the card would use FAT32, which easily handles much larger than 4GB. WinCE 3.0, moreover, has full support for FAT32. The fact that WinZip has a 4GB file limitation has nothing to do with anything, either.
--janak
Like I said I wasn't sure about 64bit int's support in the CE filesystems. I said "so unless someone knew for sure". Looks like you know for sure that CE supports FAT32. I used to think that all those Flash cards were formatted as FAT16. BTW are flash cards formatted by default as FAT32 in PPC or its just that there is support for FAT32 in PPC?
The WinZip example was just to show that even today there are applications on Windows that can't handle more than 4GB well so there can very well be apps for PPC that have problems. Though I can't quite imagine which app on PPC would want more than 4G files. File system being able to span 4G though is nice and of course that is seamless for the apps as long as the files they create are less than 4G.
Like I said I wasn't sure about 64bit int's support in the CE filesystems. I said "so unless someone knew for sure". Looks like you know for sure that CE supports FAT32.
I've formatted flash cards as FAT32 and the Pocket PC recognizes them, no problem. By default, flash cards are indeed formatted FAT16, but anything greater than 2GB would have to be formatted FAT32 (unless they use 64K clusters -- but only NT/2k/XP support that on FAT16).
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The WinZip example was just to show that even today there are applications on Windows that can't handle more than 4GB well so there can very well be apps for PPC that have problems.
OK, that's true, although the maximum size of a file is a different problem as opposed to the maximum size of a filesystem. FAT32's maximum file size is 4GB anyway, so it's a moot point unless you're using NTFS; in NTFS's case, you are probably hitting the 32-bit limit, but in WinZip as opposed to the operating system.
I think my point is that we're discussing apples and oranges. Both important fruit, but different nevertheless.
I've formatted flash cards as FAT32 and the Pocket PC recognizes them, no problem. By default, flash cards are indeed formatted FAT16, but anything greater than 2GB would have to be formatted FAT32 (unless they use 64K clusters -- but only NT/2k/XP support that on FAT16).
I've never gotten my cards to work with FAT32 for some reason (my laptop runs win2k and my desktop run winxp).
Hard disk size Flash makes me think: Would be nice if there was a way to 'lock' your CF card into your device, so that a random person can't just pull it out when you're not watching.
(unrelated to size of CF maybe, but losing 10GB of data sounds worse than losing 128MB of mp3s).
One should ponder if there's a way that a random person couldn't just run off with your entire device while your not watching. Why bother taking out the CF when you can have the whole thing.
Beyond that, try glue. It will keep the average person from pulling out your CF, including you. I suppose you could always apply the solvent to get it out after that :-)
Like I said I wasn't sure about 64bit int's support in the CE filesystems. I said "so unless someone knew for sure". Looks like you know for sure that CE supports FAT32.
I've formatted flash cards as FAT32 and the Pocket PC recognizes them, no problem. By default, flash cards are indeed formatted FAT16, but anything greater than 2GB would have to be formatted FAT32 (unless they use 64K clusters -- but only NT/2k/XP support that on FAT16).
So you see most PPC applications expect FAT16 file systems. And there can be subtle compatibility issues when you use FAT32 with applications even when the OS support is fine. When the first breed of Hard Disks with greater than 4GB came in, some applications had problems installing. The reason was that the free space calculation in some apps did went awry since greater than 4GB free space cannot be represented with a 32 bit number and would truncate to negative and hence it would fail to install due to insufficient disk space! Though admittedly this was with apps that weren't written properly and did not do the calculations quite right. But still it was a problem nonetheless.
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
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Originally Posted by ShivShanks
The WinZip example was just to show that even today there are applications on Windows that can't handle more than 4GB well so there can very well be apps for PPC that have problems.
OK, that's true, although the maximum size of a file is a different problem as opposed to the maximum size of a filesystem. FAT32's maximum file size is 4GB anyway, so it's a moot point unless you're using NTFS; in NTFS's case, you are probably hitting the 32-bit limit, but in WinZip as opposed to the operating system.
But I was listing all kinds of problems that can happen with a move to greater than 4GB and not just one kind. And that includes any app that you might like, not working due to that. And problems can be subtle like the free space calculation example I gave.
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
I think my point is that we're discussing apples and oranges. Both important fruit, but different nevertheless.
Actually I'm not comparing Apples and Oranges. But rather I'm talking about lets say all the various problems that can happen when you mix Apple or Orange juice with an uknown chemical. They sure are different but it can still cause unsavoury reactions in both of them if you know what I mean Basically I'm not pointing to or comparing just one or the other issue but in general saying that greater than 4GB flash cards need more testing in the general before we are sure there aren't any problems or subtle compatibility issues.
When the first breed of Hard Disks with greater than 4GB came in, some applications had problems installing.
Indeed, but not at the 4GB barrier, but rather at the 2GB barrier (signed, not unsigned 32-bit ints). A few ancient DOS and Win3.1 programs (installers, mostly) had issues with the free space calculation because they did indeed assume FAT16. However, this only comprised relatively few programs that didn't use standardized, modern APIs that worked at the file level. And if you could install those programs elsewhere, you could usually copy the program itself onto the large partition without problems.
It's important to note, though, that most applications don't access the disk at the disk level, but rather at the file level. As long as an individual file is less than 4GB, which FAT32 mandates anyway, the application is not going to barf.
The one class of PPC applications that could fail are those that do things like report free space or report space utilization, e.g., today plugins and file explorers. The remaining programs should run fine (and Pocket PC installers don't check for free space, AFAICT). This is backed up by the fact that a fair number of people own 5GB Toshiba PC cards and haven't reported problems with them.
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And that includes any app that you might like, not working due to that. And problems can be subtle like the free space calculation example I gave.
No. File accesses do not change. The OS transparently handles the disk size. The application doesn't know that it's breaking the 4GB barrier, unless it's doing low-level manipulations. Such manipulations don't occur in productivity or entertainment applications.
To be more precise, most applications on a PC execute a number of system calls to do manipulation. There's the open() system call, which is given a filename and returns a handle to that file. Then there's the read(), write() and seek() calls, which manipulate bytes and positions within that file. Nowhere is absolute byte positioning used.
I've never gotten my cards to work with FAT32 for some reason (my laptop runs win2k and my desktop run winxp).
Weird. I never had a problem with FAT32 on my Microdrive. I don't use it on the 512MB SD, but that's because there's no real reason to. Both your laptop and desktop should have handled FAT32 on the flash just fine.
Re: Folks, hold your horses!
Basically I'm not pointing to or comparing just one or the other issue but in general saying that greater than 4GB flash cards need more testing in the general before we are sure there aren't any problems or subtle compatibility issues.
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