Most of the technical information on this page was taken from the Compact Flash Association web page. . First introduced in 1994 by SanDisk Corporation, CF cards weigh a half ounce and are the size of a matchbook. Flash technology CF cards are designed with flash technology, a non-volatile storage solution that does not require a battery to retain data indefinitely. CompactFlash storage products are solid state, meaning they contain no moving parts, and provide users with much greater protection of their data than conventional magnetic disk drives. They are five to ten times more rugged and reliable than disk drives including those found in PC Card Type III products.
CF cards consume only five percent of the power required by small disk drives.
These storage densities can effectively be doubled with the use of compression software. Many CF applications will require only low capacity CF cards. A 2MB CF, for example, will store approximately 1,400 double-spaced pages of text created with a word processor or hundreds of pages of faxed material. This means that any CF card can operate at either voltage. Years of field experience in portable devices have proven the reliability and durability of this connector in applications where frequent insertions and ejections of the card are required.