zif to cf adapter

[Arrakis+9]

Hi everyone.. just wanted some additional input on this matter im having with an adapter i got off amazon. basically to make a long story short i killed my laptops hard drive. being a netbook it had a 1.8" hard drive in it with a zif connector.

so naturally i didn't want to get another mechanical hard drive for this thing for obvious reasons. i instead decided to get this little jewel http://www.amazon.com/Compact-Flash-...8818558&sr=8-1 i also picked up a 16gb compact flash drive with it.

now comes the predicament. i installed everything, got it all hooked up and presumably "working" the activity led on the adapter stays solid green so i know its getting power and its hooked up correctly how ever when i boot my computer and look in the bios it doesn't show up.. so i decided that it probably just needed to have the cf card formatted. so i pulled it out and made a fat 32 partition on it and it showed up just fine i could copy and move files to it but it still refuses to show up on my netbook

i was just wondering if any of you guys had any thought to the matter

[dr emulator (madmax)]

silly question but what is your laptops specs/model no?
have you got an o/s disc or is it built in?
+ are you saying it shows up in your notebooks bios
or just as a removable disc in windows on your pc

[Arrakis+9]

Originally Posted by dr emulator (madmax)

silly question but what is your laptops specs/model no?
have you got an o/s disc or is it built in?
+ are you saying it shows up in your notebooks bios
or just as a removable disc in windows on your pc

its an HP mini 1000
i use an external dvd rom drive to load up the os, it currently doesn't have one because the adapter doesn't seem to be working
it doesn't show up in the bios at all

[MRCL]

Try formatting the card as NTFS, not FAT32 and see if it pops up.

[Arrakis+9]

Originally Posted by MRCL

Try formatting the card as NTFS, not FAT32 and see if it pops up.

tried but still doesn't see the cf card

[Geofrancis]

compact flash card are not the easyest thinig to boot from. what make is the compact flash card? alot of cheap cards wont let you use them as a hard drive becasue they do not have DMA mode that hard drives use they only have IO mode that cameras use that is very slow and doesnt usualy work with a pc.

out of the dozen or so cf cards i bought to boot from the only one i found to boot reliably was a 1gb industrial CF card that was designed for the job and a cheap no-name 2gb card from ebay that was so slow it was unusable.


also double check the zif cable that your using they are very fragile and you may have damaged it. i have been through 2 .

[Arrakis+9]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

compact flash card are not the easyest thinig to boot from. what make is the compact flash card? alot of cheap cards wont let you use them as a hard drive becasue they do not have DMA mode that hard drives use they only have IO mode that cameras use that is very slow and doesnt usualy work with a pc.

out of the dozen or so cf cards i bought to boot from the only one i found to boot reliably was a 1gb industrial CF card that was designed for the job and a cheap no-name 2gb card from ebay that was so slow it was unusable.


also double check the zif cable that your using they are very fragile and you may have damaged it. i have been through 2 .

that actually clears up a lot. thanks! i bought a 16gb kingston elite pro cf card.. not sure if it supports dma mode i didn't check but i currently have another adapter coming from amazon to eliminate the possibility that, that is the problems. as for the cf card I'll look into it supporting dma thanks so much for the replies !

[dr emulator (madmax)]

well i'm hoping for your sake your notebook hasn't got a different type of connection like some dell pc's had on there powerpacks
the only other thing that i can think of is your cf needs to be in a hd format or in other words somehow made to act as a harddrive some sort of image,i have heard of something called slipstreaming drivers and such onto cd's,talk to mussels (a mod here)as i remember him mentioning it somewhere here at techpowerup
i do know sometimes bioses have to be upgraded to accept certain sized harddrives so if that applies to compact flash as well i don't honestly know
i can see this being a problem for alot of people in the future
btw when you said killed the hd are you talking of (a)dropped it possibly damaging other small unseen parts or (b)messed with the o/s ?
as far as i can tell these sites are the only ones i can link you to
http://lowendmac.com/reviews/07/flash.html
http://forums.mininoteuser.com/viewt...t=224&start=20
http://s206905281.onlinehome.us/blog_jayt/?p=3
most if not all had dodgy software in hope that helps a little
although if you have damaged something chances are it won't run again
yes i know it might switch on but that doesn't mean it'll work
lcd screens coming on and bioses showing can mean nothing sometimes and whilst reading through this i have got to agree with geofrancis that some cf cards are atrociously slow

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by Arrakis+9

that actually clears up a lot. thanks! i bought a 16gb kingston elite pro cf card.. not sure if it supports dma mode i didn't check but i currently have another adapter coming from amazon to eliminate the possibility that, that is the problems. as for the cf card I'll look into it supporting dma thanks so much for the replies !

do you have another cf reader like a usb one or something to test the card with just to make sure it works?

Originally Posted by dr emulator (madmax)

well i'm hoping for your sake your notebook hasn't got a different type of connection like some dell pc's had on there powerpacks
the only other thing that i can think of is your cf needs to be in a hd format or in other words somehow made to act as a harddrive some sort of image,i have heard of something called slipstreaming drivers and such onto cd's,talk to mussels (a mod here)as i remember him mentioning it somewhere here at techpowerup
i do know sometimes bioses have to be upgraded to accept certain sized harddrives so if that applies to compact flash as well i don't honestly know
also i can see this being a problem for alot of people in the future
btw when you said killed the hd are you talking of (a)dropped it possibly damaging other small unseen parts or (b)messed with the o/s ?
as far as i can tell these sites are the only ones i can link you to
http://lowendmac.com/reviews/07/flash.html
http://forums.mininoteuser.com/viewt...t=224&start=20
http://s206905281.onlinehome.us/blog_jayt/?p=3
most if not all had dodgy software in hope that helps a little
although if you have damaged something chances are it won't run again
yes i know it might switch on but that doesn't mean it'll work
lcd screens coming on and bioses showing can mean nothing sometimes and whilst reading through this i have got to agree with geofrancis that some cf cards are atrociously slow

compact flash cards dont need any drivers because they use a standard IDE interface to transfer data that's why the adapter dont have any chips on them as they are just physical adapters because the cf card is electrically IDE if you chopped a ide cable up and stuck the wires in the right holes of a cf card it would work.

i just done some googleing there i dont think the card you bought is udma

[Arrakis+9]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

do you have another cf reader like a usb one or something to test the card with?

yah, already tested formatted and put stuff on it and it works properly it just doesn't support dma or udma but i found some on amazon that do... alot more expensive though

[Arrakis+9]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

do you have another cf reader like a usb one or something to test the card with just to make sure it works?



compact flash cards dont need any drivers because they use a standard IDE interface to transfer data that's why the adapter dont have any chips on them as they are just physical adapters because the cf card is electrically IDE if you chopped a ide cable up and stuck the wires in the right holes of a cf card it would work.

i just done some googleing there i dont think the card you bought is udma

yah i just checked and its not... i did find ones that do support it though ! they're about $50 more dollars than i wanted to spend though

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=prid-20&...&sprefix=udma+

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by Arrakis+9

yah, already tested formatted and put stuff on it and it works properly it just doesn't support dma or udma but i found some on amazon that do... alot more expensive though

bummer i know the feeling tho. i went through:

2x 2gb no name cf cards worked but very slow
1gb industrial cf worked perfect
8gb ibm micro drive didnt work
8gb industrial card didnt work
8gb no name cf card didnt work

[dr emulator (madmax)]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

do you have another cf reader like a usb one or something to test the card with just to make sure it works?



compact flash cards dont need any drivers because they use a standard IDE interface to transfer data that's why the adapter dont have any chips on them as they are just physical adapters because the cf card is electrically IDE if you chopped a ide cable up and stuck the wires in the right holes of a cf card it would work.

i just done some googleing there i dont think the card you bought is udma

yep i knew that