CFast

CFast 2.0 uses a 7+17 pin connector: seven contacts carry the SATA III signal at 6 Gb/s, seventeen handle power and control. Read and write performance therefore reaches the same ceiling as any SATA drive, around 550 and 500 MB/s, and data transfer stays predictable under long sequential loads. The compact form factor of roughly 42 × 36 mm and the absence of moving parts make CFast a convenient way to keep the operating system removable — a whole machine can be reconfigured by swapping one card.

Two cards of equal capacity may differ tenfold in service life, so the shortlist is built from endurance in TBW, the declared operating temperature and the presence of power-loss handling. Industrial grade cards work from −40 to +85 °C, hold a validated firmware revision and use flash from traceable lots, which matters when the equipment must be certified once and produced for years. Wear leveling, ECC and bad block management run inside the controller and directly define how long the card survives in the field.

The format became standard in CNC machines and industrial PCs, professional cinema and broadcast cameras, in-vehicle and railway recorders, medical instruments and test benches. In such systems the card usually stores both the operating system and the working data, so a failure stops the machine rather than just losing a file. Where the design needs raw NVMe speed instead of SATA, the modern successor is CFexpress; where the card is permanently installed anyway, a 2.5″ SATA SSD gives more capacity for the same money.

We confirm lead times, NAND type and firmware revision before the purchase order, quote per configuration and provide samples for validation on your equipment. If a part reaches end of life, our engineers select an equivalent and support its introduction into production. All formats are collected in the Memory and Storage catalogue.