Compact Flash as a hard disk

[badger]

I've got myself a 4Gb SanDisk Extreme IV CF card (genuine, not a dodgy Ebay job) FAT32 formatted and a CF-IDE adapter. The adapter has three jumpers for external/IDE power, master/slave and 5.5v/3.3v which by default are set to external/master/5.5. The system will post with the card in my IDE port and it is detected as an IDE hard disk by the BIOS, but it won't boot into Windows, it just hangs after post with a blank screen. I've tried several combinations of the jumpers but there was no change. Any ideas?

[jimbouk]

Is it trying to boot the CF card with nothing on it? Try setting the priorities in BIOS to boot from a second hdd or something similar.

ps it probably work work as a proper harddrive in windows, http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/RAID-F...iew-29665.html

[Funkstar]

it is a real shame this won't work.It'ssomething i've looked into in the past too.

You could probably get Linux to work on it, but it sounds like Windows is having a hissy fit.

[badger]

Reading up on it, I need a specific type of CF card (even the Extreme IV isn't suitable) and a better CF-IDE interface. It is possible, just a little fiddly. SanDisk should make a CF card aimed at hard disk use and bundle it with an IDE adapter.

[Funkstar]

Or you could just get an SSD instead.

If you are buying high performance SD cards and adapters, i think regular SSDs work out cheaper per GB. Of course, you might only need 4GB...

[p5ymon]

Hi there.
Well after trying a Kingston 8 gig 266x CF and now a Transcend 8 gig 266x in two CF to IDE devices I'm a bit stuck.
My BIOS recognises it fine, windows takes an age to boot with this device connected, when it eventualy does there's no disk there. It shows up on in the device manager as 'disk drive' but has no letter assigned to it.
A similar thing happens if I use an enternal USB to IDE and plug the CF to IDE into that - again windows will pick it up as 'disk drive' but it's not accessible.
According to the Transcend web site this particular card should auto sense what mode it's in and change from removable disk to fixed disk.
Maybe I need to try another different type of adapter? I've just ordered a SATA version so will see what that does.
Apart from that anyone have any further ideas?

Cheers.

Simon.