I got this technique from an taiwan digicam forum...

Background:
Compact Flash are just formatted like a harddrive, it uses FAT system ("NOT FAT32"), and by default...
128MB CF uses 2048 Allocate Unit Size
256MB CF uses 4096 Allocate Unit Size
512MB CF uses 8192 Allocate Unit Size

What to do:
What they suggested is to use a bigger allocate unit size than the default setting, when you try to format it simply by right-click and select "format", the allocate unit size is fixed. To avoid that...
(All the steps are according to windows XP, I don't if other version have the same equivalent)
1. Open Control Panel
2. Open Administrative Tools
3. Open Computer Management
4. Go to the Disk Management
5. Select the CF and format from here...now you can specify the allocated unit size.

Results:
I have a 256MB Dane-Elec CF card, before using this method, I could only record 63 seconds of VGA videos. Then, I formatted it using 8192 allocate unit size, and now I can record uptil I have 1 second left, that's 218 seconds (the card shows that I have 219 seconds buffer when it is blank), no idea why it won't record for that 1 second.

Side notes: with the old format, 3M Fine gives me 200 pictures, but after format with the bigger unit size, now it shows that I only have 199 pictures.
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