format CF card @ fat64: how to?

[onboardcamera]

this is my question, maybe the FAT64 can be more better that fat32, really?? how to do it??

[Rom]

FAT64 does not really exist. There is an exFAT format (which people have dubbed "FAT64") but it's only used on the latest WindowsCE devices and Windows Vista. I don't believe any hardware device (unless it has a new WindowsCE maybe) supports it.

I'm pretty sure that the Chasecam doesn't support it (so even if you formatted it, it would not work), and it's not really needed unless you exceed a 4GB file size. However, since only CE and Vista support it, it's pretty useless to 95%+ of Windows users. A more useful format would be NTFS (difficult to support in hardware devices) or (my personal favorite) Ext3 (which could do up to a 16 TERAbyte file size!). Of course, NTFS would be useless to any Windows machine running 3.11, 95 or 98 (probably not a big deal), and Ext3 would be useless to any Windows machine period (not a big deal to me ;)).

Of course, if the Chasecam could let you choose between FAT32 and Ext3 that would be awesome. Those of us wanting to do high quality huge file sizes could use Ext3 ;)

With the upcoming HD models I wonder how the filesystem issue is going to be resolved... A HD video can easily exceed 4GB without much effort... Maybe built-in storage (so that it can be whatever format) with an interface to offload the video as a mass-storage device? Or you still put in CF cards, but need to use the recorder to offload the video (unless you have the ability to mount Ext3 or whatever). Splitting video files I guess could be done (on a 4GB boundary), but that gets messy during editing. If it's in HD format, it would be nice to have the original raw file (likely AVCHD?).

I think a model with built-in SSD (Solid State Disk) would be ideal. a 64GB model can be had for under $150 now, and it could store hours of HD content (especially if, as I suspect, any HD offering will likely be 720p rather than 1080p). Then you just plug the unit directly in to a computer via Ethernet, and you can mount it as a CIFS share. That will circumvent any filesystem issues - Windows, Mac and Linux could all mount it just fine - and it's highly unlikely that anyone with a Chasecam won't have an Ethernet port - Chasecam could just sell an Ethernet-to-USB dongle for people that really need it ;)

Heh, my post was longer than I intended and got a bit extended, although you get my point :) Someone please correct me if the Chasecam does, for some reason, support FAT64... I did a quick "sanity check" search and it doesn't seem like it does.

Thanks!

S.