Hacking Formatting SDXC cards (64GB and above) to FAT32

[JGSM]

Hey guys, here's a simple tutorial do format SD cards above 32GB to FAT32, so they work with Loadiine and stuff.

At first, SDXC cards can only be fomatted to exFAT or NTFS file systems on Windows, but there's a way around it.

1 - Insert your SDXC card into your computer.
2 - Follow these steps (copied from a post by the user Rick95838 and edited by me - Link at the end of this post)

Open a command prompt (Google how to do that on your Windows version)
Run "diskmgmt.msc" on the command prompt
Run "diskpart.exe" on the command prompt
New window opens.

- In new window prompt is "DISKPART"
- In DISKPART run "rescan"
- In DISKPART run "list disk"
- Check what number your SD card is listed (in my case it was 1)
- In DISKPART run "select 1" (because my card was number 1. Input the number of your card here)
-----MAKE SURE YOU ARE SELECTING YOUR SD CARD, NOT A HARD DRIVE PARTITION. DO NOT MESS THIS UP!!-----
- In DISKPART RUN "CLEAN" should get msg "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk."
- Now check the Disk Management window for a "Disk 1" Removable with a similar size to the total size of your SD card (it's probably a little less than 64GB, 128GB etc, depending on your card).
- Notice that there is a black bar, which means that space is unallocated.
- In DISKPART run "create partition primary"
- Should get msg: "DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition"
- Do not close any windows yet (because I did not and I want to make sure you are doing just as I did. I don't know if closing windows change anything).

3 - Now access this website. You can download this program called fat32format here:

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm
Click on the picture Fat32format running (it's right there, you can't miss it) to download "guiformat.exe".

4 - Open guiformat.exe
5 - Select your SD card. Again: MAKE SURE YOU ARE SELECTING YOUR SD CARD.
6 - Select the unit size and click start.
7 - You can close any remaining windows now.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I need to apologize here because the steps above are not 100% exactly like what I did, although they are really close to it. I can't redo all the steps because I have only one SDXC card and it has a lot of stuff in it already (and it would take ages to copy everything into it again to make a 100% accurate tutorial).

If these steps don't work, you can reformat your card by right-clicking on it and selecting "format" and keep using it normally for regular data.

Link to instructions I (partially) followed to format my SD card: https://discuss.howtogeek.com/t/how-can-i-format-a-128gb-usb-stick-to-fat32/3934/14

 

[GBAhack]

Thank you for these instructions! I haven't confirmed my Android works more reliably with this type of formatting, but note that on my Windows 10 platform, instructions are slightly different:

1. At the DISKPART prompt, I needed to enter select disk 1 rather than select 1
2. I then used the DISKPART command detail disk to ensure I had selected the correct disk
3. I then ran the clean and create partition primary commands as shown in your instructions.
4. For my 128 Gb micro sd card, I selected 32768 as my allocation unit size in guiformat.exe's selection field for that value.

 

[BaamAlex]

Why so complicated? Use guiformat to format bigger cards with fat32 and 32k cluster size.

 

[greenPie]

Nevermind.

 

[chrisrlink]

besides a 32gb card is good enough it's the nand/usb drives you need to worry about