Fellow writer Dan Nimtz reported back in July that PalmPowerUps had released a beta of its SDHC driver. The driver was to enable Palm devices to be able to access SDHC cards, which have much more storage than regular SD cards. Most Palm devices other than Treos or Centros cannot read or write to SDHC cards and Palm never did write an SDHC driver for their handhelds as they've been concentrating on their smartphones.

I read over at palmpowerups.com that the PowerSDHC has been released in full. According to Palmpowerups, it's one of their most complex projects they've ever undertaken - particularly since each device must be individually supported. The current version is said to support the Palm TX, LifeDrive, Tungsten T5, Tungsten E2, Zire 72, Zire 31 and Tungsten C. Next on the roadmap of devices to be supported are Tungsten E, Tapwave Zodiac, and Tungsten T3.

Palmpowerups warns that on some devices you will need to install a FAT32 driver and that said FAT32 driver is VERY inefficient and slow when mounting the cards. Users will have to decide if accessing the larger capacity SDHC cards is worth the initial process of making FAT32 access available to their devices and slow access times, but from what I've read in response to the announcement, MANY folks think it is!

PowerSDHC is available for $20.95. A "trial key" for the program is available which gives you 8-9 days unrestricted access, after which the driver will become read-only and speed-limited to a very low speed of 50 KB/s. (Please note that at this speed PalmOS will take up to a half a minute to recognize an inserted card. Do not worry, it is not hung.) Once the trial has expired, you may delete it and soft reset to remove it, or purchase it to get a new, permanent, key file by clicking 'buy" under the PowerSDHC icon on the front page and follow the usual PalmPowerups purchasing process.

To receive a trial key, you can login or register/login. Once logged in, the trial key should be jsut a few clicks away. If you're interested, check out the article for yourself and get a trial key!

Some of our forum members are discussing the the sizes of microSDHC cards that the Palm Centro can handle. Forum member hkklife responds in the thread saying:

The Centro supports SDHC cards up to 4GB OFFICIALLY. Unofficially, 8gb (and larger, in theory) cards work but the Garnet OS sees the larger cards as separate 4gb blocks. Most apps can access all of the data on the card, but the card info utility freaks out with file volumes larger than 4 gigs.

That is, if you have an 8GB card and 5GB is used, it'll say that ~1GB is in use and ~3GB remain free.

So basically, either stay right under 4GB of files or go past it and you'll be ok...

Forum member wilder_jw recommends getting a card reader as they are the simplest way to load a card with music, video, photos and other files. I agree. I have the SanDisk MobileMate SD Reader for Centro and Treo and I carry it with me everywhere. It makes moving files so easy. I reviewed the SanDisk MobileMate and found it a neat little gadget.

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