CFtool is a simple console-mode application to aid in setting up a
Compact Flash memory card for use as a bootable disk device in an
Embedded PC.
Although CF cards can be considered 'just disks', they cannot be
easily managed using the Windows operating system, as none of the
standard tools will allow the user direct access to the card's
contents.
***NOTE*** These tools DO require Administrator-level access
on the computer on which they are run! The tools
don't do much at all without that access..
This new tool handles tasks like transferring images of partitions
from and to the CF card, and so on.
The program can be started without arguments to see what their
calling syntax (usage) is. For example,
P:\ALIX> cftool
DUTCH*Star CF Image Transfer Tool V1.0.6
Copyright 2011,2012 MicroWalt Corporation.
Usage: cftool [-dqv] [-bblksz] [-ooffset] [-sskip] [-llength] [-LIRW]
[drive] [args]
-L
-I
-R
-W
list
show
copy
copy
available drives
detailed info on a drive
data from drive to image file
data from image file to drive
P:\ALIX> _
Although this may look a bit scary, relax: most of these options
will never be used by most people, as they are mostly intended for
advanced users who have to perform some complex operation on a card.
The 'v' option means verbose. Most of my tools have both this and
the 'd' (debug) option, where more options on the commandline mean
a higher level, thus '-v -v -v' (or '-vvv') means a verbose level
of 3. This use of an option allows the amount of blah to be
controlled :)
Where the 'v' (verbose) and 'd' (debug) options cause more data to
be displayed by the program, the 'q' (quiet) option does exactly
the opposite: in quiet mode, the program will run quietly unless
an error occurs.
The 'CFtool' program can be used to transfer image files from and
to the CF card, but before we do so, we first must find out what
the drive number of the CF card is in Windows; this usually depends
on how the card is connected to the PC, for example.
To get a list of (usable) disk devices, start up the program with
just the -L option, which should produce a list of usable devices
for the program:
P:\ALIX> cftool -L
DUTCH*Star CF Image Transfer Tool V1.0.6
Copyright 2011,2012 MicroWalt Corporation.
Available drives:
0
size = 100030242816 (93 GB)
1
unavailable (empty socket?)
2
size = 4017807360 (3831 MB)
3
unavailable (empty socket?)
4
unavailable (empty socket?)
P:\ALIX> _
On this PC, we have the system drive (normally referred to as
the "C" drive), and we have an USB-connected multi-cardreader
device, one of which' sockets is holding our 4GB CF card. Some
of those cardreader devices always enable all their sockets
(which is the case on the one we use here), and some of them
will only activate a socket if there is a card in that socket,
so your display may look very different.
Since we know that we only have one system disk and one possible
CF card, we can assume that disk 2 is the one we would like to
work with. However, if there is any doubt at all, or if want to
see additional parameters of that device, you can use the -I
command to tell the program to show more info:
P:\ALIX> cftool -I 2
DUTCH*Star CF Image Transfer Tool V1.0.6
Copyright 2011,2012 MicroWalt Corporation.
Disk: PhysicalDrive2
[Drive Geometry]
Device size (LBA)
Active C/H/S
Bytes per sector
Device size (CHS)
=
=
=
=
4017807360 (3831 MB)
488/255/63
512
4013936640 (3827 MB)
[Adapter & Device properties]
Bus type
= USB
Removable device
= Yes
Device hotplug = Yes
Media hotplug
= No
Vendor
= Myson
Product
= CS8819A2-111
Revision
= 1.01
1
P:\ALIX> _
As expected, this indeed looks like the 4GB card we have in the
cardreader, so all is good.
The remaining two commands are 'R' (to read the contents of the
card into an image file on disk) and 'W' (to write the contents
of an image file back to the CF card.
Reading the contents of a CF card into an image file on disk is
easy- just specify the device number and the name of an image
file to write to:
P:\ALIX> cftool -R 2 test.img
DUTCH*Star CF Image Transfer Tool V1.0.6
Copyright 2011,2012 MicroWalt Corporation.
Device written to image file.
[Operation]
Passes:
1
Errors:
0
Read Bytes:
Avg. read speed:
Max/Min read speed:
4017807360 (3831 MB)
8838899 (8631 KB/s)
0 (0 B/s) / 0 (0 B/s)
P:\ALIX> _
Obviously, it will take a while to read all the data from the
card into the image file- the exact time depends on the speed
of the CF card, the speed of your computer, and so on.
During the operation, the program will try to adjust itself to
optimize its I/O throughput, so normally, you don't have to
provide any other options.
Sometimes, it may save time if only part of the CF card is read
and written to an image file. For this purpose we can use the
'o' (starting offset in blocks) and 'l' (length of data to read,
in blocks) parameters. These default to 0 (first block of the
card) and 'all blocks on the card', respectively. So, a command
like:
P:\ALIX> cftool -o 20000 -l 1024000 -R 2 test.img
would read a total of 1024000 blocks (sectors) from the CF card,
starting at block number 20000. This comes in handy if only parts
of the card, for example a single partition, have to be copied.
Writing image files onto a CF card is just as easy in most cases;
we just specify the device number and the name of an image file
to write to the device. For example, the command:
P:\ALIX> cftool -b 1048576 -W 2 test.img
DUTCH*Star CF Image Transfer Tool V1.0.6
Copyright 2011,2012 MicroWalt Corporation.
Image file written to device.
[Operation]
Passes:
1
Errors:
0
Write Bytes:
4017807360 (3831 MB)
Avg. write speed:
6125708 (5982 KB/s)
Max/Min write speed: 6315473 (6167 KB/s) / 1899827 (1855 KB/s)
P:\ALIX> _
will write the image file named 'test.img' onto the CF card known
to the system as 'disk 2', using a blocksize of 1MB (1048576 bytes.)
In the case of writing files, we sometimes get better results using
different blocksizes; the default blocksize is the size (in bytes)
of a single sector, usually 512 bytes. By specifying a larger size,
it usually (but not always) results in faster transfer speeds.
As with reading only parts of devices into a file, we can also tell
the program to write only a part of the image file to the CF card.
The 'o' option again tells it which device (CF card) block to start
on (defaulting to 0, start of the card), and the 'l' option again
tells it how many blocks to transfer (defaulting to 'all of image
file'.) We also have the 's' (skip) option, which tells the program
how many blocks of the image file to skip before starting to really
read data from it. Obviously, this parameter, too, defaults to 0.
Enjoy,
Fred PA4YBR,
info@dutch-star.eu
The DUTCH*Star Project
http://www.dutch-star.eu/