To eject a removable storage device from a Windows machine requires stopping the device. Click on the tray icon Safely Remove hardware, stop the device, wait for the message that it is safe to remove and then physically remove it. Not doing it this way may corrupt the file structure and cause data loss, but will not physically damage it. The reason is obvious: stopping will flush the cache to the device and confirm thereby changes and leave the file structure in a consistent state.
Repairing or formatting may help to get the device working but may let you loose data.
What Edwin describes proves this: he deleted the files and the files were still there in the other device because the device was not stopped correctly.

Wolf, what do you mean with "crash"? Can you still format it?

dunno, haven't tried yet, but at the moment:

* I can't boot from it @ the MSX
* Windows can't read certain files and dirs (it freezes, tho a ctr-alt-del enables me to get rid of it)

My previous CF was in the end not even readable at all in my windows cardreader.. accessing the card caused the same crash..

Looks like a corrupt file structure!

Try CHKDSK on MSX or if you think, you know FAT structure well enough, try DISKVIEW. Note, that CHKDSK does not do any changes without /F parameter.

I think the brand of cardreader matters a lot. I use a Sandisk cardreader and I have -never ever- removed/ejected my compactflash cards the safe way, nor have I ever suffered from any data loss whatsoever caused by not doing so.

Not so much the hardware itself, but probably the driver that came with it. All it has to do is prevent windows from delaying writes to the device.

A colleague of mine told me last week that in Windows XP they actually were smart enough to disabled cached writing for removable media (as opposed to Win2k)... Dunno how much of that is true. Ah well.

~Grauw

Well, this is why it is a good idea to have a fairly big (256? 512?) CF sitting resident in CF combo cartridge (C - FAT12, D - FAT16), and another 8/16/32 cart to be use for file moves between PC and MSX

On the other note, I do too use SanDisk USB 2.0 6-in-1 card reader, and I hadn't had any issues, ever

Do shops still sell 8/16/32mb CF cards ..?

Half a year ago I asked for 64mb @ Dixons.. couldn't get smaller than 128mb ..

When I bought my cf adapter last year, the smallest card I could buy was 64mb. I bought that one, but soon afterwards I bought a 32mb one on www.marktplaats.nl. The second 32mb card came with my digital camera (I now use the 64mb and a 256mb card to store the pictures).

I think the smallest and cheapest CF cards in retail are 128Megabytes, and I can safely predict that 128 and 256 CFs will disappear in about a year due to tiny price dirrecence compared to 512 models.

Mainstream right now is 512MB/1GB, enthusiast (i.e. expensive) is 2/4/8GB, and ghetto (i.e. dirt-cheap) is 128/256MB.

And I still have 8MB Kodak (SunDisk OEM) CF card from 1998 It's my big floppy for MSX

Quote:

Not so much the hardware itself, but probably the driver that came with it. All it has to do is prevent windows from delaying writes to the device.

In Windows XP (Professional at least) you can specify this behaviour. Open Device Manager, select the properties of the CF Reader device, select the Tab Policies and choose either for Optimize for performance (= write cache) or Optimize for fast removal. Default is fast removal.

I just bought a new one today .. have to unpack/install it yet .. .. really if you see how they pack those things.. damn small card in a huge pakaging, plastic that's hard to cut open.. etc.

I've a Kingston 256mb now ... is that decent?

I fear I'll only use some 16mb of that 256mb orso o_O Damn .. A - J drives on my MSX

Quote:

Well, this is why it is a good idea to have a fairly big (256? 512?) CF sitting resident in CF combo cartridge (C - FAT12, D - FAT16), and another 8/16/32 cart to be use for file moves between PC and MSX

dhau, yeah, that is what I do too. Found a cheap-ass 16MB cart for that ;p.

HansO: aha, that makes sense.

Wolf: I have A-D as drives 1-4 of my 128MB CF (I just wouldn't partitionize drives 5-8 if I were you ), E for my 16MB CF, F for my diskdrive, G for the virtual diskdrive, and H for the RAM drive in case I need it. Though I could probably have two more for a CF, because I don't really use either G or H, I like it this way. (Of course, DOS3 *cough* will fix the lack of drive names, hehe ).

With a bit of luck you can use your old Sandisk as secondary cart for interchangeing files between your MSX and PC, because just as dhau said I would *never* take the risk of exposing my main MSX harddrive with all my valueable data to a PC ^_^.


~Grauw

I usually only swap samples .. since the only thing that my MSX ever runs is mbwave, and usually I can store tons of (small) samples on a simple disk that I use for swapping, that way I don't need to reboot the msx all the time. Only once in a while I insert the CF in my PC to make a major backup.

Right now I've another problem.. I made partitions on my 256mb card.. I can only see 6 partitions because of the 8-drive limit.. (G & H are diskdrives) .. however, I don't intend to use more than 1 .. MAYBE 2 partitions ever .. the real issue is that while I can save stuff on the D: partition on the msx, I can't do the same on the PC .. with previous CF cards I didn't have this issue, but currently I can only read things from my PC CF .. not write.. alt-enter reports 0 free space and 0 used ... o_O. So atm it's kinda worthless as I can't restore my samples/apps/tunes etc.