Hi Klee,
Sandisk Extreme III is set as removable, so it cannot work as a hard drive. However there’s a utility offered from Sandisk (before they separated the general line from their industrial line market) that can change its cards from ‘removable’ to ‘fixed disk’ (TrueIDE) type, then the card will work as a hard drive. The utility’s name is ‘ATCFWCHG.COM’. You may try to google for the utility.
The usage of the utility is not that hard. First, the card has to be installed as primary IDE or secondary IDE. Then boot into DOS and enter the following:
ATCFWCHG /P /F (for primary IDE)
ATCFWCHG /S /F (for secondary IDE)
The program has to be operated under real DOS mode, so it may be better to do it on a desktop (through an IDE-to-CF converter), since TR doesn’t have a floppy drive, nor does it support booting from USB. However, it has a CDROM, so booting from CD to DOS is still possible. So create a Boot CD using methods stated here: http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd and burn the required files (e.g. ATCFWCHG.COM) along with the Boot CD on the disc, then boot up the TR with the CF card and the CD inserted.
By the way, I’ve actually switched from Transcend 300x to the Sandisk Extreme III 16GB too, ever since someone showed me the write speed of it was as fast as its read. Only read speed was lower though (30MB). However, I found that the write speed wasn’t as promising as the guy claimed (sequential read:30MB, random read:30MB, sequential write:15MB, random write:3.5MB). Another reason for purchase was that the price was much more reasonable. It was at least 50% cheaper than Transcend 300X. It’s not SLC flash though. But it’s not worth that much for this performance I think (write slower than the original 4’200rpm hard drive. (8GB one seems faster though)
However, the battery seems to be running out faster with the Sandisk than Transcend. I don’t know if it’s the card or Windows 7. Since I’ve switched to them both at the same time.
If you succeed, could you post your benchmark results too?
Edit: I forgot I hadn’t disabled devices I don’t need as I did in Vista. The battery life gets better now.
