hard drive and sd card utility

corvairbob said:

i have a obdll scanner that i need to format the sd card and for the life of me i can't delete any files on it or format it it say bad....

It does sound like the SD card may be failing....

... but one time i had a program that did lots of this stuff and i had to redo this hard drive and now i don't have it anymore i thought it was on a thumb stick but i do not see it does anyone know of a free hard drive sd card utility that will let me see if i can get this card formatted or maybe repair it good enough to use

Was it this?

It is strongly recommended to use the SD Memory Card Formatter to format SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards rather than using formatting tools provided with individual operating systems. In general, formatting tools provided with operating systems can format various storage media including SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards, but it may not be optimized for SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards and it may result in lower performance.

SD Memory Card Formatter - SD Association

Write failure [including inability to be formatted, is a common first sign of a defective SD card / USB stick.
You might carry on being able to read its current contents for years but would never be able to change them.

It's time to buy a replacement.

Denis

I cannot recommend a particular brand other than to say that I always try to buy everything from brands that believe that they have reputations to protect through retailers who also believe that they have reputations to protect.
I think it is only a belief in having a reputation to protect that makes firms apply rigorous quality standards consistently.

I am often swayed by the existence of a long warranty period but only if the warranty terms are acceptable.

It doesn't affect you but Samsung-Seagate in the UK now makes customers pay for warranty returns without any refund of the international postage charge that is required.

- Their warranty partner / subsidiary is in the Netherlands. Even posting a USB stick there costs almost £10.
- I have never known any other company do this {even those that make customers pay the postage initially agree to refund the money when they examine the goods & agree that its return is justified}.

Other members might recommend particular brands based on their own personal experiences.

All the best,
Denis

Have to agree, SD card [2GB and smaller] and SDHC cards [4GB and larger] can be problematic at times. Generally it's best for those used in cameras be formatted in the camera rather than a computer. Most of those at 32GB and smaller come formatted as FAT32, haven't checked those larger yet. Windows won't format more than 32GB, it's a FAT32 limit. My wife's CPAP machine uses an SDHC card for writing files for the techs to read/save to their computer, either just delete or reformat.

Berton said:

Windows won't format more than 32GB, it's a FAT32 limit.

Windows can't but MiniTool partition wizard can apply Fat32 when formatting drives of greater than 32GB.
I did this to my 476GB SD card and Windows works with it quite happily.

I think it is only worth diverging from NTFS if there's a reason.
I sometimes need to connect that SD card to my phone and the phone does not argue back for Fat32 [but does for NTFS].
The same might apply to SD cards for cameras for all I know.


All the best,
Denis