Formatting micro SD card for use on laptop.

Hi. My laptop has a slot for a micro SD card that I wish to put to use. Based on reviews, I purchased a Samsung 256 GB 100MB/s MicroSDXC EVO card. I plan on storing and playing my music from it, and photos on it since I have limited space on the SSD. Before I start moving everything over I was wondering which format type to use, as I've been told they can be painfully slow.

Just to be clear, I'm NOT using this for a backup solution, just for companion storage.

Thanks in advance!

That size your only option is NTFS as there is prolems formatting that size with fat32

Samuria said:

That size your only option is NTFS as there is prolems formatting that size with fat32

FAT32 supports drives larger than 256 MB, but Microsoft only allows the OS to format up to 32 MB. There are supposed to be work-arounds for that, like formatting from the command line, but why bother?

exFAT would be an alternative to NTFS.

Make sure that you do a "quick" format, or it could indeed take a while.

A full format might be done to erase the drive, although more secure methods may be wanted if the data are to be rendered completely unrecoverable.

bobkn said:

FAT32 supports drives larger than 256 MB, but Microsoft only allows the OS to format up to 32 MB. There are supposed to be work-arounds for that, like formatting from the command line, but why bother?

I think you mean 256 GB instead of 256Mb. and MS allows Win10 to format FAT32 based drives up to 32 GB only

erpster4 said:

I think you mean 256 GB instead of 256Mb. and MS allows Win10 to format FAT32 based drives up to 32 GB only

Typo - I meant 256 GB, the size of the OP's drive.

As to the size of a FAT32 drive, Windows supports much larger FAT32 drives than 32GB, although MS has limited Win10 to only format drives up to 32 GB as FAT32. I believe that some older versions of Windows don't have that limit, and there are certainly utilities that can do it. Here's one: Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd

(I tried doing it from the command line, as some web sites suggest. It doesn't work under Win10 1903.)

There's a large difference between "possible" and "a good idea". I recommend that you stay with NTFS or exFAT, just as the nice people at Microsoft want you to.

I recommend this sd formatter app from the sd association which created the sd format specs in the first place.
SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows Download - SD Association

x509 said:

Can this Windows formatter be used safely for other flash card formats, e.g. CF? It's a pain formatting CF cards in my camera because there are two CF slots.

Hi there
If you have the appropriate card reader whether internal or attached via a USB connection you can format any of these things --even the old Sony Duo sticks --remember those --- I still have a couple of the old IBM Microdrives which were used as CF in early Canon digital cameras e.g D30 / D60 etc.

File system depends on the card size and the OS being used for the formatting process.

Cheers
jimbo

What types of SD memory cards can be formatted?
You can format both standard size SD memory cards and microSD memory cards based on the following capacity types:

SD/microSD card: FAT12/16 up to 2GB
SDHC/microSDHC card: FAT32 more than 2GB and up to 32GB
SDXC/microSDXC card: exFAT more than 32GB and up to 2TB