Compact Flash

Captain Dean · Jan 16, 2015

Hello everyone,

Just starting on a Allen Bradley 1769 L32E and components. Had an old FujiFilm 64MB CompactFlash card... will that work in the L32E? The instructions say it uses an Industrial CompactFlash; is there any functional / pinout difference?

TheWaterboy · Jan 16, 2015

format it RAW, that is, not fat 16,32 or ntfs. I think the size limit was 2gb, i never got a 4gb to work.

dmroeder · Jan 16, 2015

It may and it may not. We tried using after market flash cards and they were hit and miss. We'd buy a bundle of them, they all looked exactly the same and some worked and some didn't. Seems like the CF light would turn red on some of them. We ended up giving up and buying the AB ones and never had a problem.

Captain Dean · Jan 17, 2015

Thanks TheWaterBoy, I'll format it RAW.

Thanks Dmroeder, if it doesn't work, I'll get the right stuff.

Ken Roach · Jan 17, 2015

My understanding (and successful practice) has always been to format the cards as FAT16.

I think if you format them RAW, the controller will just format them to FAT16 itself. I suppose that's sure to get the block size options right.

I agree that 2GB are typically the largest you can get to work PanelView Plus or with CompactLogix/ControlLogix.

I buy "industrial CompactFlash" for in house use, but always deliver A-B labeled cards to customers.

Bunnie Huang did a fascinating teardown on retail SD cards a while ago that really opened my eyes to why they are so variable in quality.

Captain Dean · Jan 18, 2015

Thanks Ken Roach,

I formatted the card FAT (assume 16) because I did not have a RAW choice. Interesting Bunnie Huang article. Seems that counterfeiting is rampant in China and we get genuine and non-genuine products all the time.

I'm just beginning to learn PLCs so it will be a while before I know if this card works or not.

TheWaterboy · Jan 18, 2015

Just FYI - to format RAW, you just make the partition "Active" in disk manager. Thats it. Then it will show up as RAW.
Ken knows his stuff farr better than I do so you will probably be fine at FAT16, but when I did this a couple years ago I did have problems with the PLC recognizing the FAT16 CF card that all went away when I just left it RAW. I just did this again last week and the RAW worked again without a hitch.
If you have a problem with FAT16, please post back and let us know.

Ken Roach · Jan 18, 2015

I didn't know that about setting the partition active in Disk Manager. Thanks !

TheWaterboy · Jan 19, 2015

Ken, might not be "active". Istr there can be only one active partition on a machine so that might not be the right option. I'm away from windows machines at the moment so I can't test this. But its worth mentioning before damage is done. I'll use the right word when I get near one.

CapinWinky · Jan 19, 2015

Industrial CF cards contain special logic to allow them to be partitioned into multiple drives and even do a simple RAID type control on these partitions for redundancy. This is utilized by many PLCs that use them. The vast majority of consumer grade cards do not support this type of behavior and will have partition failures.

This is, of course, in addition to better heat and vibration tolerance and more reliable solid state memory.

TheWaterboy · Jan 19, 2015

I have never heard Raid used in these. Thats interesting, where did you get that info?

CapinWinky · Jan 19, 2015

The RAID is just the safe partition feature of VxWorks, not actually done by the CF card itself, but requires the CF card be able to have partitions. The CF cards do have built in error correction though, which is more robust on industrial cards.

TheWaterboy · Jan 19, 2015

Copy that. Different memory cell design as well. Same is true of thumb drives.

Captain Dean · Feb 10, 2015

Thanks for all the discussion everyone. Very informative and I had no idea CF cards (Industrial) could be as versatile as an actual hard disk drive.

TheWaterboy · Feb 10, 2015

FWIW here is a link I have bought from before
http://www.amtron.com/cfcard.htm

These are what I have in my desk. Its not clear that I bought these from them though.

Compact Flash

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