Card Export II for PPC emulates USB Mass Storage

[Colin Dunstan]

Softick's Card Export II allows Pocket PC owners to mount their storage cards or file stores as logical disks under Windows/Mac/Linux desktops. At least for transfering large files, it is reported to be faster than using ActiveSync - plus you can use any file manager of your choice!

Download a free evaluation version by clicking here. Currently supported are Intel PXA25x and Intel PXA 27x based handhelds with WM 2003 and WM 2003 SE.

Not sure if Softick is a bit late with this tool since Microsoft's forthcoming WM 5.0 adds a USB Mass Storage driver that enables any Windows CE-based device to expose a native storage device to a USB host.

Update: V2.01 is available which fixes a couple of small bugs.

[Alexander Turcic]

Wooow that is pretty freaking cool!!!!

I am going to try it out with my Dell now.

[Alexander Turcic]

Works great! I can finally access my storage card like a removeable hard disk without using a card reader. Alas, the tool did not recognize my internal flash storage yet. Still great!

Attached you find two screenshots.

[Alexander Turcic]

Someone already wrote a quick preview of this tool:

http://winmobiletech.com/062005CardExport/

[Alexander Turcic]

When copying a large file (e.g. movie file) from my host to the Axim, the file is transferred with at a speed of 640.00 KB/s (it remains relatively fixed at that speed), which is still much faster than using ActiveSync. Also, the CPU usage on the device stays relatively low while transferring at around 15% with 624MHz.

[Alexander Turcic]

Download is at 768 KB/s.

[Alexander Turcic]

Small update:
Softick Card Export II PPC 2.01 has been released with quick fixes for a few small bugs.

[hacker]

Originally Posted by Alexander

When copying a large file (e.g. movie file) from my host to the Axim, the file is transferred with at a speed of 640.00 KB/s (it remains relatively fixed at that speed), which is still much faster than using ActiveSync.

That's pretty standard, since ActiveSync (and HotSync) both treat your device as a "serial disk", and go through several vfs layers to get there, hence the slow speed.

CardExport on PalmOS does the same thing as the PPC version.. but has been deprecated now with the newer Palm devices by mounting the Palm directly, as you would any other USB external drive.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by hacker

... but has been deprecated now with the newer Palm devices by mounting the Palm directly, as you would any other USB external drive.

I am afraid that could happen to Card Export for PPC as well with the emergence of WM 5.0, which has native support for representing a USB mass storage device. But until then, I am more than happy to not be force using ActiveSync anymore. In fact, I can now entirely get rid of it since I am not using Outlook!