SD Card Formatting

[milbil]

Advice please:

 

I need to format an SD card in prep for my car arrival.  It will be for music playback on an Amundsen.

 

The manual says that NTFS, exFAT and FAT32 is accepted however on other threads I have read that only FAT32 works.

 

I have a 64GB SDXC card and it will only allow me to format in exFAT or NTFS.

 

Does anybody know any ways round this?  Have any of you found the other formats to be OK?

 

Thanks

 

 

[greenstripe]

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/295302-sd-card-formatting/

[gullyg]

My Admunsen will not recognise a SD card formatted in anything other than FAT32.

 

I'm not particularly up on windows but I think all you need to do (I'm on a mac at the moment and don't have easy access to a windows machine I can test this on) is the following,

 

Open command prompt as "administrator" - search for it in and then right click and select "run as administrator"

 

type

    format /Q /FS:FAT32 X:

 

WHERE X is the drive letter of your SD Card.  NOTE :  This will wipe your card, anything on it will be deleted.  Please make sure you have the right drive letter or you might wipe the wrong drive.

 

 

 

 

Other option is you could create an Ubuntu live CD and use gparted, or use a gparted live cd or disk utility in OSX will format as Fat32.

 

[edit]

Tested on my work machine with a USB Key (shouldn't matter as long as you get the right drive letter - if one doesnt show in explorer, format as ntfs etc first).  Worked ok.

Edited 6 December, 2013 by gullyg

[andyvee]

There is a utility called large fat32 format or something similar that will do 100s of gigs as FAT32

Sent from my phone so please excuse brevity and spelling

[andyvee]

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Sent from my phone so please excuse brevity and spelling

[henderson]

USE EX-FAT !!!!!!! handles more than fat 32  which means better throughput

[greenstripe]

I haven't tried it myself, but I have heard of people using the command line to format a 64GB volume to FAT32 as described by gullyg -no apps required. Obviously you cannot do this on a mac as you can read but not write on to a FAT32 volume.

 

 

USE EX-FAT !!!!!!! handles more than fat 32  which means better throughput

If you  follow my link in post #2 you will see that I had problems using an SD card formatted to exFAT

[gullyg]

USE EX-FAT !!!!!!! handles more than fat 32  which means better throughput

 

Out of interest what do you mean by handles more and better throughput?  My understanding is that the big difference was that FAT32 had a hard limit of 4gb per file, not an issue on Admunden seeing at it's apparently impossible to play video files from removable media in the UK.

 

 

[edit]

Interesting - appears a quick google answered my own question.

 

FAT32 apparently becomes inefficient about 32GB and can only handle ~65,000 directory entries.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2801/exfat_versus_fat32_versus_ntfs/

 

I haven't tried it myself, but I have heard of people using the command line to format a 64GB volume to FAT32 as described by gullyg -no apps required. Obviously you cannot do this on a mac as you can read but not write on to a FAT32 volume.

 

 

If you  follow my link in post #2 you will see that I had problems using an SD card formatted to exFAT

 

 

You can write to FAT32 on a mac and Disk Utility (included in OSX) will allow you to format to it as well.  NTFS on the other hand is read only by default although there are various add-ons.

 

I'm curious as to why windows wouldn't let you format a SD card, or any other USB Key, HDD etc etc to FAT32 anyway - but according to the internets you can't do it with the GUI for partitions higher than 32GB.

Odd...

 

 

[EDIT]

It appears I really should use google more.  At least this is a good diversion from work that's due for submission at 23.59.

Edited 6 December, 2013 by gullyg

[henderson]

Out of interest what do you mean by handles more and better throughput?  My understanding is that the big difference was that FAT32 had a hard limit of 4gb per file, not an issue on Admunden seeing at it's apparently impossible to play video files from removable media in the UK.

 

 

[edit]

Interesting - appears a quick google answered my own question.

 

FAT32 apparently becomes inefficient about 32GB and can only handle ~65,000 directory entries.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2801/exfat_versus_fat32_versus_ntfs/

 

 

 

You can write to FAT32 on a mac and Disk Utility (included in OSX) will allow you to format to it as well.  NTFS on the other hand is read only be default although there are various add-ons.

 

I'm curious as to why windows wouldn't let you format a SD card, or any other USB Key, HDD etc etc to FAT32 anyway - but according to the internets you can't do it with the GUI for partitions higher than 32GB.

Odd...

 

 

[EDIT]

It appears I really should use google more.  At least this is a good diversion from work that's due for submission at 23.59.

 

 

Have a read of this http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm worth noting as this will in the next few years be the new way systems deal with the fact that more and more people are moving over to SSD's  Tis the future you know.

[henderson]

Have a read of this http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm worth noting as this will in the next few years be the new way systems deal with the fact that more and more people are moving over to SSD's  Tis the future you know.

oh and sd cards with newer memory modules

[greenstripe]

gullyg -my mistake I was mixing up NTFS and FAT32 compatibility with mac

[greenstripe]

The big problem with exFAT is that it is propriety and owned by Microsoft, who won't give out licenses to allow other manufacturers' platforms to be fully compatible

[henderson]

The big problem with exFAT is that it is propriety and owned by Microsoft, who won't give out licenses to allow other manufacturers' platforms to be fully compatible

yes this is true as they want royalties (percentage of use) and the reason why they are doing this is windows xp is extinct for support as of 2014 which then leaves a lot of peoapl having to adopt a more reltatively nwere operating system wheich again will have a life cycle and also become extinct in 2017 so that's a jump from fat32 to ntfs which at the moment is currently the faster more reliable format for the moment until windows 7 end of shelf life 2020 which by that time probably all systems will be SSD and SD card. but anyway Microsoft invented it it owns it it does as one pleases.