FAT or FAT32

[Guest bingobob]

I'm rebuilding my device, de-cluttering and installing just what I need after a binge of downloading all the freeware I could find known to man (my first PPC and I've been very impressed with it so far).

I'm going to format my 1 gig micro sd card before continuing.

Do I format FAT or FAT32 or does it even matter?

[Guest wally(tm)]

for card with capacity to 2GB it DOESN'T MATTER ! :)

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archiv...w-about-sd.aspx

it's all about SD cards :D

James,

SDHC is mainly about increaseing the maximum size, it moves from byte addressing to sector addressing, which allows up to 32GB (technical limit 2TB).

It also moves from FAT 16 to FAT32. (FAT16 uses a 16 bit address, so, the cluster size is 32KB, so 65,536 X 32KB = 2GB, some naughty cards used a 64KB cluster, so got 4GB)

There is also new speed ratings previously you had *peak* write speeds of:

4x: 600 KB/s

16x: 2.4 MB/s

40x: 6.0 MB/s

66x: 10MB/s

133x: 20MB/s

now you have speed "classes", with *sustained* write speeds:

Class 2: 2 MB/s

Class 4: 4 MB/s

Class 6: 6 MB/s

the impact? well it impacts hardware and drivers, but nothing else really. just what you'll see on the packet. Just make sure, if your buying a SDHC2.0 card, that you have a device that supports it!

Riki

so in basic:

if you have card bigger than 2GB it will have to have fat32 on it ... it's impossible to address more than 2gb of space with fat16, if you want to play hard, you can make 2 x 2Gb fat16 partitions on your 4Gb card ... but it seams stupid ... at least for me ;D

you can make partition on your card fat32 .... but it may screw up your card ( it's not said for sure that inside controller will "support" fat 32, in 99,999% it's safe, but there is always some risk ), second is this, that personally I don't know if hermes can read from and write to fat32 ... and third ( for me most important ) is the speed issue ;D if you have fat16 ... your card reader in your phone have to cope with FAR LESS data to calculate when it tries to read or write.... with fat32 you have big amount of addressing space, but to get some data you have to calculate bigger address ... therefor it takes more time ... if card reader is not build for fat32 it will have to emulate it by system or by it self = MORE MORE MORE time to wait for single data ...

and last thing .... if you will format your's card to fat32 you will move your self from byte addressing to sector addressing = when you have many small files on partition, they use a lot of space .... wasted virtual space in unfilled sectors :D and IMHO it's not so hard to get many small wiles on ppc :D

cheers

Edited January 25, 2007 by wally(tm)

[Guest schriss]

My 2GB is formatted FAT32, works in TyTN, in my Canon S3 IS Camera and is readable in my card Reader, so I'm happy :)

Use Pocket Mechanic to see what's the cluster size and how much space is wasted.

[Guest dskeeles]

Do I format FAT or FAT32 or does it even matter?

Depends what it's been working on so far. I bought an (alledgedly) Sandisk 2Gb MicroSD, and it seemed to be one of the poor quality ones out there. For these, they tend to work OK with FAT, but start causing problems with FAT32 (ie. failed reads, corrupt disc, etc).

I reformatted mine back to FAT32 recently during a rebuild, and it's lost virtually the entire disc once since then. A PC-based recovery program brought it back, good as new, in a second, however - so it's not necessarily a total loss.

Ironically, I'd decided to store my important files on the 'non-volatile' flash ;-)

[d]

[Guest bingobob]

Depends what it's been working on so far. I bought an (alledgedly) Sandisk 2Gb MicroSD, and it seemed to be one of the poor quality ones out there. For these, they tend to work OK with FAT, but start causing problems with FAT32 (ie. failed reads, corrupt disc, etc).

I reformatted mine back to FAT32 recently during a rebuild, and it's lost virtually the entire disc once since then. A PC-based recovery program brought it back, good as new, in a second, however - so it's not necessarily a total loss.

Ironically, I'd decided to store my important files on the 'non-volatile' flash ;-)

[d]

I'm still not really clear on this, despite all these answers? Anyone else got a view, I'm about to do a reinstall.

[Guest wally(tm)]

simply check what cind of filesystem you currently have, and format to same filesystem format ...easy ? no ?? let me get it straight, by messing with sile system, when you don't know what you are doing, you can simply F... your sd card. And apparently you don't know a .... why ? because you are considering proper filesystem for 20 days, geez googling would take you less.