It’s well known that Cisco wants to sell you a 512MB compact flash card for $150. So, what’s so special about the Cisco branded ones? They have a Cisco sticker on them.
I just bought a couple of 2GB compact flash cards, formatted them in my router, and they work like a champ!
No flash card inserted:
Router#show flash
%Error show flash: (No device available)
Router#
Insert new 2GB flash:
Flash card inserted in flash. Reading filesystem on the device…
Wait for the completion message before accessing device
Filesystem read completed in flash.
Device in flash available for use
*Oct 6 19:59:18.411: %FILESYS-5-CF: CompactFlash inserted
Router#show flash
%Error show flash: (Invalid DOS media or no media in slot)
Time to format the drive with the good old format command:
Router#format ?
flash: Filesystem to be formatted
Router#format flash:
Format operation may take a while. Continue? [confirm]
Format operation will destroy all data in “flash:”. Continue? [confirm]
Format: Drive communication & 1st Sector Write OK…
Writing Monlib sectors.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Monlib write complete
….
Format: All system sectors written. OK…
Format: Total sectors in formatted partition: 3905809
Format: Total bytes in formatted partition: 1999774208
Format: Operation completed successfully.
Format of flash complete
Now to check the drive:
Router#show flash
No files on device
1999437824 bytes available (0 bytes used)
It takes a whole 2 minutes to take a standard off the shelf compact flash drive and prepare it for use with your routers. Now you can super size your order with all the money you will save!
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