The most common reason why only one Compact Flash Card is usable when multiple Compact Flash Cards are connected is due to a device signature collision.
If you are dealing with bootable devices and seeing this problem, we are confident a collision is the issue. If you are not dealing with a bootable device, then our information below will, probably, not help.
What is a Compact Flash Card signature collision?
A signature collision can happen on any bootable device, so Compact Flash Card cards, SD cards, microSD cards and USB flash drives. A disk signature is a unique identifier number (UID). It is a unique identifier stored as part of the MBR (Master Boot Record) for an operating system loaded on the device. The operating system will use the UID to identify and distinguish between storage devices. It is commonly made up of eight alphanumeric characters. A disk collision occurs when your operating system (Windows) detects that there are two disks with identical signatures.
For Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, these versions of Windows will disable the second drive and will not allow that second volume to mount until the disk collision has been rectified. If you are reading this article, chances are, this is exactly what is happening to you.
The first thing to do is navigate to the Disk Management tool with in Windows. To do this, use the search tool and type in Disk Management. This will take you to the utility that Windows offers. Here you can see your multiple devices connected. If you click or hover over the device not working you will see one of two messages:
High end digital SLR cameras use two compact flash slots to record duplicate images during photo sessions. The idea is to provide a backup in the event the media goes bad, gets corrupted or the misplaced by the photographer.
Toshiba announced the launch of a new line CompactFlash (CF) memory cards, the Exceria Pro series, specifically targeting the DSLR (digital single less reflex) market. The new cards will be compatible with CF revision 6.0 and will offer performance even higher than XQD format, previously developed by Nikon and Sony and is a proprietary format.
The initial line-up of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB cards will come to market Q2 2013 and offer the world’s highest level read (up to 160MB/s) and write (up to 150MB/s) speeds. Exceria Pro will position Toshiba to meet the demands of the high-end DSLR market, including high resolution image capture, sustained continuous shooting, HD video recording and high speed data transfers to other devices.
Fully compliant with UDMA7 high speed interface anyone using with high speed DSLRs or video with VPG-20 standards will benefit from this increased speed format.
Interestingly the CF market is going to increase up to 50% between now and 2015. In addition, this might be the perfect high speed card to use with our previous post, the Nexcopy CF Duplicator.
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LAKE FOREST, Calif.–Nexcopy Inc., a leading manufacturer in USB Duplicator solutions, announces their all new CF Duplicator system for data loading to Compact Flash cards.
“Coupling the power of Nexcopy’s Drive Manager software and the new CF duplicator design our system can handle any configuration requirement by contract manufacturers or fulfillment housesâ€
Deep CF sockets with guides for easy insert and removal
CF Duplicator available in 15, 30 and 45 target systems
Powerful duplicator software with many advanced features
Unique data may be copied to each card
Nexcopy is announcing the all new design of our CF duplicator solutions. These robust and reliable CF duplicator systems are available in 15 socket, 30 socket and 45 socket configurations.
The new CF Duplicators by Nexcopy Company are designed with functionality and ergonomics in mind. With top loading CF sockets in combination with deep rail guides to easily insert and remove CF media the new system will virtually eliminate bent pins from high volume duplication of CF media.
“Coupling the power of Nexcopy’s Drive Manager software and the new CF duplicator design our system can handle any configuration requirement by contract manufacturers or fulfillment houses,” reports Greg Morris, President of Nexcopy. “The system is PC based and provides tools such as duplication from IMG files, unique data streaming to each socket, network connectivity and rich Graphical User Interface for performance feedback and log reporting.”
All CF duplicators can copy from an archive IMG file, from a physical master device and include binary bit by bit verification functions. These systems are ideal for bootable CF cards. The new CF Duplicators by Nexcopy.com are available for immediate purchase with a starting price of
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The Compact Flash Association introduced a new standard recently. The standard was release because CF media continues to get press from high performing SD cards where most camera manufacturers are favoring. I suspect the SD format is more inviting because of the smaller form factor. Well this is where the XQD spec address’ that issue.
Key features of the XQD format include: a 38.5mm by 29.9mm by 3.8mm optimized size format, greater durability, scalable high performance interface, based on PCI Express 2.5Gbps today and 5Gbps in the future (instead of PCMCIA used by SD cards), and actual write speed targets of 125MB/sec and higher.
“The XQD format will enable further evolution of hardware and imaging applications, and widen the memory card options available to CompactFlash users such as professional photographers,â€
said Shigeto Kanda CFA chairman and Canon executive.
Licensing for CFA members will start in early 2012, and no camera makers have announced plans to use the format yet.
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CFast is a variant of Compact Flash. A traditional Compact Flash card is based off ATA or IDE bus for data transfer. Since most CF cards are used for embedded applications, the forum was looking to increase speed. They did this by creating CFast which is a technology based of Serial ATA bus.
This means the connector is completely different for Compact Flash cards and CFast cards. So if you are thinking about increasing your performance of a CF card while using your traditional CF card Reader, you’ll be S.O.L. The CFast uses a different connection type. In addition, if you are using the CF cards for camera’s, you’ll have to get a new camera…one that supports CFast connection. CFast cards use a 7-pin SATA data connector (identical to the standard SATA connector).
The data transfer rate of CFast is about 3 times faster than Compact Flash. So we’ve jumped from 100MB/s to about 300MB/s.
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If you need to recover files from a Compact Flash card then try Flash Memory Toolkit. This software package is a free download for most features and will perform functions like read/write benchmark tests and recover files from a flash card or flash drive.
USBPerformance software will allow you to recover a file from a Compact Flash card. This is how it works.
The utility will make a binary image of your Compact Flash card…it doesn’t matter if you can’t read the data or not, it’ll still make an image file.
Then the utility will mount the image file as a drive letter on your computer [PC only].
From here you can browse your content and recover that file from your Compact Flash card.
In most cases, when a flash card goes bad [either CF, SD, microSD or USB] the problem or error is from the partition table or the File Allocation Table. Since this mounting of an image gets past those issues, you can get into where the files are stored…from here you can copy them out to a normal working part of your hard drive or another removable media.
Give it a go. USB Performance website with a link directly to the file recovery page.
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The Compact Flash Organization [site] released their new 5.0 specification earlier today. It just blew the cap off the lid of storage limits. The current specification for Compact Flash is 137GBs…now that is 144 Petabytes, or PBs.
Petabyte is a big number, and most people haven’t heard of it. Well, to break it down, a petabyte is [around] 150 million Gigabytes.
Look around your house for some Blu-ray discs, that would equal six million blu-ray titles on one Compact Flash card. I guess that means no more RAID boxes, right? I mean, what’s better than solid state memory and storage the size of Texas?
We started doing the math on the time it would take a CF Duplicator to copy a 5.0 Compact Flash card, laughed and stopped. There just isn’t technology out there for bulk data loading to a device like this…let alone finding a ligitimate use of putting that much information on the card anyway.
So we don’t see a practical use for the 5.0 spec yet, but there are other improvements we should get excited about. The CFA says Revision 5.0 brings an optional quality of service framework that guarantees a certain level of performance and prevents dropping frames, more efficient cleanup of unused space, a new electrical design that better complies with ATA standards.
There’s no mention of when CompactFlash 5.0 cards will ship, but if you are still interested you can read up on the new spec here [PDF], or download the official specification for a C note.
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Nexcopy Corporation released a new line of flash memory duplication systems, the CF Duplicator 150PC, 300PC and 450PC. These PC based systems are ideal for doing bulk data loading to Compact Flash cards.
Nexcopy has some unique features to make any data loading job a breeze. For example, you can put unique files to each CF card through their Unique Data Copy function. Or a user can easily copy bootable Compact Flash cards by using the bit for bit Short Image copy function. The Short Image copy function means only the data clusters used on the CF card will be copied to the target devices…rather than the entire thing.
However, Nexcopy also provides a Full Image copy function if that is required. I’m thinking this would be good for Ext2 or Ext3 Linux formats where there are potential files that could be in any sector of the CF media.
Nexcopy Inc. CF Duplicator line starts out with the CF150PC at $1,200 with an upgrade path to the 30 port and 45 port systems. So the CF Duplicator is modular in design.
Nexcopy also mentions a user can mix and match duplicator boxes, so you could now copy to SD media, CF media and USB sticks all through one software interface, and at the same time! Not bad.
You can learn more by visiting the product page: CF Duplicator by Nexcopy. https://www.nexcopy.com/cf-duplicator/
Source: GetUSB.info.
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Super Talent is pushing out a new line of Compact Flash cards, then CFast series. The CFast has a maximum bandwidth of 375MBs which is nearly four times faster than a traditional high end CF card at 90MBs.
The new CFast storage card breaks the speed bottleneck between the SSD and the device by using a SATA interface. Super Talent has clocked these CFast cards at up to 200MB/sec read speeds. With a Super Talent CFast storage card installed, there will be no waiting time for the camera to catch up, and it will be much swifter to view pictures on a camera or to copy them to computer.
Measuring 36.4 x 42.8 x 3.3mm for Type I CFast storage cards and 36.4 x 42.8 x 5.0mm for Type II, the same physical dimensions as the CompactFlash card, the CFast Storage Card has a single-chip controller and flash memory module. The SATA interface consists of a 7-pin signal connector and a 17-pin power and control connector. The card operates at 3.3V.
Super Talent is offering five different CFast storage cards, 8GB and 16GB based on SLC (Single Level Cell) flash and 8GB, 16GB and 32GB based on MLC (Multi Level Cell) flash. The first generation of CFast storage cards supports transfer speeds up to 200MB/s.
Source: SuperTalent.
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Fully compliant with UDMA7 high speed interface anyone using with high speed DSLRs or video with VPG-20 standards will benefit from this increased speed format.
Interestingly the CF market is going to increase up to 50% between now and 2015. In addition, this might be the perfect high speed card to use with our previous post, the 
The new CF Duplicators by 
