I'd just stick the CF card into a modern PC's card reader.

You might want to align the partition to 1024KB as well. This typically will slightly increase write performance of flash drives because of the partition being aligned to the erase block size of the RAM.

You can use Windows Vista/7 diskpart or Linux to do this. XP diskpart probably won't let you work on a removable drive so you'd need to get another app called "diskpar" which works differently.

With Vista/7 diskpart:

1) select the flash disk ("list disk", "select disk #")
2) "clean" (wipes current partitions) *be sure it's the correct drive!*
3) "create partition primary align=1024"
4) "active" (sets the partition active/boot).
5) "format fs=fat32 quick" (or use regular Windows / DOS format)
6) "exit" to quit

Format it as whatever filesystem you need. Linux is of course more complex. 😉 I don't know of a way to align partitions in DOS.

hmm... so no way to do this with WinXP ? Even with some 3rd party software ?
(as linux is a totally unknown entity to me, and with no Vista or 7...)

Yeah, I know I know, but... though I'm planning on building a win7 machine, some time in the future... soon... I think 😊

PS: seems like the previous post has changed since I posted the reply above, oh well... 😜
Anyway, program named(?) "diskpar", I'll do a google then....

No you can use another app called "diskpar".

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showt … ooler-on-Vertex

Use an offset of 2048 as this is the same as the 1024KB of diskpart.

Are the same advice relevant regardless of the physical nature of the actual disk ?
I mean, does it matter whether I use a genuine but old microdrive(tiny hard disk) or a modern CF flash card ?

You don't need to align hard drives. Only flash-based drives.

Depending on the age of the PC, I tend to use an old bootable CD of DOS Partion Magic or a bootable Linux CD of Parted Magic or GParted. Even DOS fdisk should work.

So then, actual microdrives ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive ) does not need any alignment, but flash based CF cards do ?
Yes, that makes perfect sense 😎

Was wondering because I've never dealt with CF nor microdrives before.

Still, those microdrives don't seem to behave as normal disks vs my (granted elderly) programs. I'll have to try that "diskpar" thingie then.

Yup mechanical hard drives don't need special alignment but flash does because of how it natively works in large block sizes. You get better write performance because an aligned flash drive erases fewer blocks when writing files.

You might be having some CF adapter problems if the partition apps aren't working with the CF cards. They should be seem as fully compatible HDDs by the system if everything is working right. AFAIK anyway.

bestemor wrote:

Another problem I suddenly discovered, was that the adapter I bought from HongKong some months ago had a serious flaw - the 2 plastic guide rails was not of equal size ! WTF ?
One was the thinner version, which allows for modern CF cards, but the other was much thicker - meaning I could only fit the older actual microdrives(those that really are miniuature hard drives) in the slot...

I bought a couple of these and yes they have a thick rail and a thin rail. My cf's seem to fit ok, I assumed it just ensured correct orientation. Or have I misunderstood?

Man, do we feel stupid! 😵
(if you didn't believe my noob claim before, than this surely proves it)

I didn't notice that the CF card actually ALSO had different grooves.... duh!
Oh well, adapter works just perfectly now... though for some reason it didn't recognize or see the CFflash one at first, but suddenly I got a hard reboot out of the blue while at desktop, and then it suddenly was visible, both at boot and in XP.

Hmm, still much to learn here, I gather...

- Anyways, thanks a lot for all help so far!

The 'embedded' oem disk is still invisible though - probably not usable at all for this purpose.
(but if they utilize ATA commands as the web sites claim, they should work, right ? Or maybe their bios is lacking or non-existant, what do I know)