#Sd card formatter fat32 windows 10 mac

#Sd card formatter fat32 windows 10 mac

Mac users should have it much easier! Start by opening the Disk Utility and selecting the SD card: I imagine the Microsoft limitation is also to try and force people to pay licensing costs for the newer filesystems…something Microsoft has a history of doing / Mac / OSX Also, I believe the reason Microsoft doesn’t include a built-in option to format large cards FAT32 is due to the file size limitation: The maximum size any one file can be when using FAT32 is 4GB, where the max file size on newer filesystems is 16 ExaBytes. I believe the reason for all this comes down to cost: Supporting FAT and FAT32 filesystems is free, however if a company wants to include support for NTFS or exFAT (both filesystems that support cards of all sizes) they’ll need to pay a licensing fee. I’ve also seen this work on cellphone’s, camera’s and other devices that advertised FAT32 as a limit. At the time of writing this, I can confirm the SD2SNES (original and Pro), EverDrive64, Mega SD and SSDS3 are all compatible with 64GB cards and higher (I use a 256GB with the Mega SD). Once again, this has worked in every scenario I’ve tested. That’s it! Just hit Start and your SD card will now be formatted FAT32! If you accidentally leave one open, it’ll give you a “drive in use” error – No big deal, just close all boxes and try again. Please note that this program will require you to close all Windows Explorer boxes before formatting. As before, be very careful with this step, as if you choose the wrong letter, you can accidentally erase any other drive that’s plugged in!Ĭheck off the box labeled “Quick Format”.

Select the drive your SD card is in from the drop-down menu. It almost always works on the second try.įormat again with FAT32 Format and not the built-in Windows tool:ĭownload the GUI version of fat32format: No problem at all, just clear whatever garbage might appear in the “Volume Label” box and try again. I’ve found that it’s common the format will fail on the first try.

Make sure to hit the “option” button and set “FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT” to “ON”. Be very careful with this step, as if you choose the wrong letter, you can accidentally erase any other drive that’s plugged in! Insert your SD or MicroSD card into your computer and load the SDFormatter software. I’ll post a technical description at the end, but all you really need to do is format the card a specific way and depending on your operating system, it may require some (free) programs: Windows:įormat your SD card once with “SDFormatter” to clear any extra partitions that may have been added with something like a Raspberry Pi image: I found that in every single case I’ve tested, the limitation is the card’s formatting and NOT size. It’s often you’ll find SD (or MicroSD) based devices that list compatibility as “up to 32GB”.