Thursday, March 16, 2006

Support for memory cards of more than 2Gb

Some time ago was dealt with in this entry is compatible with the Palm SD cards of more than 1Gb, and in this connection there is a program that removes some Dimitry Grinberg limitations of the less recent models. But before we talk about it, I will explain what the causes of these problems with large cards.

SD cards, like hard drives or floppy disks, have to take your storage space distributed with a certain "format" (hence the word format) to be able to store data in them. There are many file systems (formats) such as FAT, NTFS, and outside the windows world Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS and more that I have not tried. However, the format used in the SD cards is only the FAT (File Allocation Table).

FAT is actually variants, according to the bits that used to route the files. Although it was the first FAT12, FAT16 is the one that has lasted until today. Is the one that used MS-DOS and now is still used by the SD cards. The problem is that the maximum size of a FAT16 file system is 1Gb (though other sources say that 2 and 4Gb). Above this size, we have to use FAT32, and here comes the problem: the pre-Palm LifeDrive only support FAT16 (with the exception seems to be the T5). The conclusion is that these devices will not recognize an SD card 4Gb or more. The Palm that they can use these cards larger ones, are ¿T5?, LifeDrive, T | X and later, and they bring installed a driver for FAT32.

Should we resign ourselves to use as much 1 or 2Gb cards in our Palm? Because it seems to be no. As I said at the beginning of this post, Dimitry has drawn the FAT32 driver for the LifeDrive, and what has changed so you can work on other Palm oldest. Download is free, and you can download it directly, here.

This program is free, but neither guarantees nothing: in some models of Palm will work and others do not is a matter of taste. On the Internet you can find the experiences of other users with this issue. So it appears that the Tungsten T3 supports it, not when these drivers, could only use a maximum of 2Gb cards, and just to read them. It also happens that, when using a FAT32 Chunk larger than FAT16, access to the card is faster, sizes Supported even without the driver. This makes it even more interesting test this driver. Moreover, a better overall design of the driver appears to be the cause of the cards that are formatted with FAT16 tanbién read faster.

From the driver Dimitry, and with a bit more hack, has also managed to get a 1Gb card to work in a Zodiac. Talking about it in this forum and the file is here to download. The same appears to have done but for the Treo 650, although this is already required to make a custom ROM, with the risk involved. For users of a UX also seems to have a specific version.

A notice to mariners. Very careful with formatted with the FAT32 single SD card you have, and then do a hard reset. Keep in mind that in making this reset, it erases all that you have installed on the Palm including the driver, so until you return to install, you can not read that card again. And finally: to install these drivers must first copy the file to your memory card, and thence to the RAM. Make a direct hotsync to the RAM will not work. Luck with the evidence.


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