Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
I'm using 32gb cards now and I'm probably not going to go to 64gb until there's a price drop, but for future reference--why does the 64gb need to be refomatted?
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Because the SD consortium are idiots....
Let me expand and revise my remarks..
The SD consortium has never been forward looking. The first kind of chips were in FAT 16 format, which limited them to 2 GB (if you ignored the sign bit). When this was first standardized, 32 MB was a big chip.
Chips got bigger and there was a need for bigger SD cards, but they were limited by their format (FAT 16). So they came up with a new format standard - SDHC, which was FAT 32. They (blithering idiots) then hobbled FAT 32 from 4 Terabytes to 32 GB max as a standard. At the time 4 GB was a big chip.
Now all the original SD devices can't read a SDHC chip, their firmware was written for FAT 16 only.
Chips kept getting bigger and you couldn't use more than a 32GB chip in a SDHC gadget...So they came up with a even newer format call SDXC, which will handle up to 2 terabyte chips. It is a heavily modified version of FAT 32, and it is proprietary, you have to pay $300,000 dollars for a license to use it in firmware. (Multiple words omitted for decorum).
A SDHC reading device can't read SDXC format...But...FAT 32 itself was not limited to 32GB, just the standard. So many devices did not code the 32Gb limit in the firmware, but just read FAT 32 files, period. So, with 3rd party reformatting software, you can reformat a SDXC (officially a ex-FAT format) to a FAT 32 format, good for 4 terabytes, max. I use one called GUIFormat, there are others.
But you don't know if it will work until you actually stick on in the device in question and see if it will read it. I checked Sansa Clip+ firmware, it, will read it. Rockbox will, I already tested it. So this extends the chip size for many, many devices, if you go to the bother of reformatting the chip. (It's really easy, run the program, set the file type to FAT 32, and click the reformat button, 20 seonds and you're done. Only have to do it once..)