HOW TO - Format an SD Card (especially 64Gb) to FAT 32

[eckka]

I did a bit of searching and found a way to format a microSDXC Card - 64Gb, even on a Windows7 machine...

Click on Start and then click on Run... Type CMD to bring up a Command box and here type in Format /fs:FAT32 driveletter: where driveletter is what appears as the assigned driveletter for the SD card on your machine. Press Enter and you will asked if you want to proceed.

Once you confirm the operation you will see information stating what the current Filesystem is and that it will be changed to FAT32. It will format the card and then verify it which will probably a while - it took nearly five minutes to verify a 2Gb Sd Card!

Once done it will ask you for a Volume Name, just press ENTER for NONE. You will then be given a report. Type EXIT, press ENTER and remove your card.

Plug it in again to verify the format by right clicking on the Drive letter and selecting Properties. Here you should see FAT32 as the File system.

Good luck,

Eric

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[Astrix]

Great info & tips!

[bigdave240]

havent tried it that way on sd cards but it should work. only thing is the driveletter has to have a colon on it like e: Have you looked at your 64gb card in the xoom after this? does it show 64? I have 32 and can't seem to even begin to fill it up but that is cool.

[eckka]

Ive changed the OP to indicate the colon after driveletter. Thanks for the headsup!

I haven't tried it on my 64Gb card but I can say that the available space, after formatting in my phone, is actually 59Gb. Obviously we still have a discrepancy between Megabyte being 1000bytes in advertising and 1024bytes in reality.

[timrock]

Ive changed the OP to indicate the colon after driveletter. Thanks for the headsup!

I haven't tried it on my 64Gb card but I can say that the available space, after formatting in my phone, is actually 59Gb. Obviously we still have a discrepancy between Megabyte being 1000bytes in advertising and 1024bytes in reality.

yep, thats what i get as well after formatting

[wolfwatcher1951]

Hello All,

Long frustrating trip, but I finally got my microSDXC card formatted FAT32, 59.46GB.

I could not get windows xp sp2 with all the hotfixes and used all 3 formatters to get past 32GB. I think once it sees 32GB it sets this value in the card in some way.

I made a new partition on my computer and even installed win 7 x64, with all updates from win update, still no go.

My very strong suggestion to anybody wanting to use the microSDXC card on the xoom is to format it to FAT32 with a smartphone, skip the frigging pc!!!

After all I tried, read, retried with the pc, I was able to format the card in less than a minute with a smartphone. WOW!

Drove to Newton, IL and went to the Cellular One store. Went in and explained my situation to a very nice lady working there and she got me a phone to use, no questions asked. Formatted the card extremely fast, longest time was just me trying to figure out how to navigate to the sd card format area and then getting the phone to show the results.

Went perfectly, the young lady there was the definition of excellent customer service, no hesitations, no questions like rather I was a customer of theirs or not, I am not. Just great help. I thanked her profusely and when I got home called the florist and sent her a small thank you of flowers. What a great day.

Moral of the story, skip the pc, get hold of a newish smartphone if you do not have one and format the card in it. Perfect

I am a happy camper, an all to infrequent situation these days.

Best of luck, Chris.