What format for sd card

**matthewjoseph255** · 07-09-2012, 04:10 AM

I have two 64gb sd cards one is formatted to fat32 the other has not been formatted at all what should I format it to for my galaxy s3
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**sparksd** · 07-09-2012, 06:04 AM

I used exFAT with mine but ran into the issues described here:

[Q] exFAT file system on microSD cards - xda-developers

I changed it to FAT32 and haven't had any problems since.

Dave

**jimbo1mcm** · 07-09-2012, 06:04 AM

Fat 32 works without any problems. It is the format that Samsung puts on their Micro SD cards when you buy them. I think Fat 32 has a 4GB file limit. Do a search for more info.

**sparksd** · 07-09-2012, 07:54 AM

Originally Posted by jimbomcm

Fat 32 works without any problems. It is the format that Samsung puts on their Micro SD cards when you buy them. I think Fat 32 has a 4GB file limit. Do a search for more info.

The SanDisk 64GB cards come formatted as exFAT.

Dave

**20blks** · 07-09-2012, 08:40 AM

I'm using xFat and have no issues.

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**bdmridgback** · 07-09-2012, 08:42 AM

My 64gb Sandisk works great formatted in exFAT. I have about 3000+ photoes and 200+songs that I loaded on the card via my pc and no issues.

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**matthewjoseph255** · 07-09-2012, 11:26 AM

what the difference tho is xfat faster than fat32

**20blks** · 07-09-2012, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by matthewjoseph255

what the difference tho is xfat faster than fat32

Larger max file transfer size

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**sparksd** · 07-09-2012, 12:32 PM

As with the posters over at xdadevelopers, what I ran into with exFAT was that of the 1500 or so music files I put on, a number of them (I don;'t recall how many) were not showing up in any music apps. When I looked at the folders using a phone-based file explorer, these missing files were there but showing up in some oddball format. But when I looked at the card using a PC-based explorer, the files looked fine. Took me quite a while to figure out that I even had a problem though as it was isolated to a relatively small number of files; from a macro level, it seemed to be working fine.

**jaimes0812** · 03-01-2013, 06:06 PM

2 GB is the limitation. Although you may be able to copy a file larger than 2 GB, like a move, but it wont play.

**Vasudev AH** · 12-18-2013, 07:22 AM

Main problem with FAT32 formating is the max no.of files the SD card can store. We can not have more than 65536 files and if the file names are longer than 12 bytes, then the max file count also comes down proportionately.
No meaning in having a 64GB SD card and (realistically) storing 20000 files because most of the music file names are longer than 25 characters.

With exFAT / NTFS formatting, one may have cross platform (Windows/Android) compatibility issues.

**mrsmumbles** · 12-18-2013, 09:09 AM

Originally Posted by Vasudev AH

Main problem with FAT32 formating is the max no.of files the SD card can store. We can not have more than 65536 files and if the file names are longer than 12 bytes, then the max file count also comes down proportionately.
No meaning in having a 64GB SD card and (realistically) storing 20000 files because most of the music file names are longer than 25 characters.

With exFAT / NTFS formatting, one may have cross platform (Windows/Android) compatibility issues.

Hm, I didn't know this.

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