Compact flash card capacity

December 22, 2006 12:05 PM

We are dragging and dropping picture files from a Windows XP PC onto a 256 MB Lexar compact flash card in a SanDisk card reader. The card no longer accepts data after around 125 MB have been transferred to it. How can we fill the card to its full 256 MB capacity to view digital photos in a digital picture frame device?
posted by hdfische to computers & internet (14 comments total)

1. Does Windows show the card as having free space when you check its properties?
2. Have you emptied the Recycle Bin?
posted by cillit bang at 12:14 PM on December 22, 2006

There might be an upper limit to image count, unrelated to size and free space. How many images are currently on it? If it's a value like "511" or "1023", that might be a really big cue.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:40 PM on December 22, 2006

I had a similar, recurring issue. Using the camera's "format card" function freed up the missing space on the card.
posted by Joe Invisible at 12:41 PM on December 22, 2006

Is there two partitions on the card?
posted by Ferrari328 at 1:06 PM on December 22, 2006

Note: if you format the card, everything on it will be gone. Copy everything off of it to your computer first.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:37 PM on December 22, 2006

Might be a silly question, but are you sure it's a 256mb card and not a 128mb card? 125mb is quite close to 128 which is the next size down.
if you empty the card, see if you can look at it in windows when it's empty and see how much space is remaining.
posted by PercussivePaul at 2:08 PM on December 22, 2006

If, after doing all of the above, it still doesn't work - then I'm afraid you might actually have a 128MB card rather than a 256MB one.

This might not be a mistake on your part as you could have been wrongly sold a card that has been advertised as having a higher capacity than it really does.

The warning bells for me was that card manufacturers use 1000 bytes to mean a megabyte (MB). If you take 128MB, this is 128 x 1000 = 128000 bytes (as measured by the card manufacturer).

Divide 128000 by 1024 (as Windows consider 1024 bytes to mean a megabyte - which is the correct amount) and you get 125MB.

Which just so happens to be the maximum amount you can get on your card.
posted by mr_silver at 2:15 PM on December 22, 2006

FAT16, the typical format for thumbdrives, have a limit on the number of files per folder and is usually 512 files in the root folder. Use more folders or a different formatting.
posted by plinth at 2:20 PM on December 22, 2006

is it an old card? flash does wear out eventually.
posted by mrg at 3:33 PM on December 22, 2006

Previously: Why is my USB storage device lying to me?

And also: 2GB CF cards sell for as low as $30 these days, so if you find yourself running out of room don't hesitate to get a larger size.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:22 PM on December 22, 2006

If you're just dumping stuff in the root directory, you're probably hitting FAT's 128 file limit for the root. Use a subdirectory or more than one subdirectory.
posted by majick at 5:06 PM on December 22, 2006

I second mr_silver, counterfeit flash drives that claim to have more space than they actually do are all too common lately. It's a fairly simple trick to make a drive report, say, 256 MB to the OS when it actually has 128. Out of curiosity, where did you buy this drive?
posted by Spike at 5:33 PM on December 22, 2006

I see people complaining about stuff like this fairly often at the electronics store where I work, and it's almost always what cillit bang said; that is, the windows recycle bin has put aside space on the card for files you've previously 'deleted'.

This is a per computer setting, so you'll have to make sure neither computer is trying to set up the recycle bin on the flash device.
posted by tiamat at 7:02 AM on December 23, 2006

Apologies if this is too obvious, but the older cameras could only use 128 or so, and there was a tiny switch on the card to access the other 128 Meg.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 8:29 PM on December 23, 2006