64GB microSD card - want to format with one large partition but can't

WinTenner · 04 Aug 2019

Thanks for all of the replies.

Somehow. after more fiddling, the card eventually ended up in a state where it was showing a lot of bad sectors. I resolved that by using an official SanDisk formatting tool and it works fine now.

ThrashZone · 04 Aug 2019

Hi,
If op was using an apple product he might of said so.

WinTenner · 04 Aug 2019

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
If op was using an apple product he might of said so.

SanDisk is an Apple product? Since when? I've had this card for at least a year or two, unused.

bro67 · 04 Aug 2019

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
If op was using an apple product he might of said so.

That has zero to do with using FAT32 with SD cards.

bro67 · 04 Aug 2019

WinTenner said:

SanDisk is an Apple product? Since when? I've had this card for at least a year or two, unused.

No. The OP is not understanding the standard for using FAT32 with USB sticks and SD type cards.

ThrashZone · 08 Aug 2019

WinTenner said:

SanDisk is an Apple product? Since when? I've had this card for at least a year or two, unused.

Hi,
Nope I was saying fat32 is a format that is compatible with windows and apple
Besides that fat32 also allows many partitions to be created which is pretty silly for a sd card
It also allows bitlocker to encrypt the sd card which also is a silly thing for a end user to want happen on a device like this.

So ntfs and mbr format is just fine.

bobkn · 08 Aug 2019

bro67 said:

It is because there is no need for exFat on a SD card that size. Fat32 is fine for that type of storage. ExFat is best if you are placing very large datasets, photos, video, CAD on the SD card.

Are you aware that Windows10 won't create a FAT32 partition larger than 32 GB?

It can read/write much larger Fat32 partitions, but the common way to create such partitions is to use a separate utility.

Berton · 08 Aug 2019

bobkn said:

Are you aware that Windows10 won't create a FAT32 partition larger than 32 GB?
It can read/write much larger Fat32 partitions, but the common way to create such partitions is to use a separate utility.

Correct, it's a Windows issue. I use GPARTED that installed with my Linux Mint or GPARTED's bootable LiveCD to do it. The main reason to use exFAT is with single files larger than 4GB, haven't checked if a computer can boot to an exFAT drive yet. I carry a lot of files on a 64GB thumb drive formatted FAT32 [that way from the factory] but also have another as exFAT in the case of needing to save a large file.

x509 · 08 Aug 2019

bro67 said:

It is because there is no need for exFat on a SD card that size. Fat32 is fine for that type of storage. ExFat is best if you are placing very large datasets, photos, video, CAD on the SD card.

Why is that? Do files have to be aware of the filesystem on a storage volume?

Berton · 09 Aug 2019

x509 said:

Why is that? Do files have to be aware of the filesystem on a storage volume?

No, but the OS/Operating System has to know. There's limitations such as FAT32 can't store a file larger than 4GB, Windows can't create or format a drive or partition larger than 32GB as FAT32, some OSes such as MAC OS X/macOS can't natively fully use NTFS but exFAT can be. A lot depends upon the need for cross-platform use of the drives. Older OSes have different limitations but most are no longer used. Windows may be the most prevalent OS but it is not the only solution in some situations, users just need to be open to ways to accomplish a task.