Transcend TS8GCF100I 8GB Industrial Compact Flash Card

I needed a compact flash to cover industrial operating temperature range -40C to +85C and able to run OS like Windows XP perfectly. The minimium requirement to run OS on compact flash is UDMA. But not all compact flash with UDMA can run OS with no complication. I had tried Lexar Professional 8GB 300x. It installed XP ok but it did not run smoothly. Error popup here and there. After I did more research, I found Transcend TS8GCF100I. After Lexar failed, I was not sure what to expect. To my amaze, TS8GCF100I ran perfectly without hiccup. Then I ran it through temperature and damp heat tests. All were ok. It has been running for 3 to 4 months now and no issue has been found. I am planning to make TS8GCF100I a standard installation for our APP-601 recorder. The 16GB TS16GCF100I would be nice upgrade if more memory is needed.

I purchased the TS8GCF100I 8GB "Industrial" CF card specifically because it was supposed to act as a Fixed drive. Per Transcend's website: "Transcend commercial CF cards are set to be Removable Disks, whereas Transcend industrial CF cards are Fixed Disks." Unfortunately, it was factory configured as Removable and therefore would not boot after installing the OS, getting stuck at the Verifying DMI Pool Data stage. This was a huge disappointment as I specifically purchased the "Industrial" card to avoid this issue. I had to use a third party DOS tool (ATCFWCHG) to force the drive into Fixed mode, and after that, the card worked perfectly. I contacted the manufacturer and I will update this review if they provide the OEM software to convert from Removable to Fixed.

excellent