What format is best for SD cards in Android devices?

[Felim_Doyle]

Where possible, I install or move applications to the SD card in my Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9505 Android 4.4.2 KitKat device. However, although this frees up internal storage, I find that the applications seem to take up far more space on the SD card.

I suspect that this is because the card is formatted as FAT32 by default which makes for easy transfers to other devices but I wonder if I could avail of more space on the card if it was formatted in an Android native format such as ext2.

Any suggestions on what the best format to use is for the SD card? Any gauge for how much space could be recovered by using an alternative format?

I'm currently using a 32GB microSD card formatted as FAT32.

 

[AArga]

Where possible, I install or move applications to the SD card in my Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9505 Android 4.4.2 KitKat device. However, although this frees up internal storage, I find that the applications seem to take up far more space on the SD card.

I suspect that this is because the card is formatted as FAT32 by default which makes for easy transfers to other devices but I wonder if I could avail of more space on the card if it was formatted in an Android native format such as ext2.

Any suggestions on what the best format to use is for the SD card? Any gauge for how much space could be recovered by using an alternative format?

I'm currently using a 32GB microSD card formatted as FAT32.

Normally all MicroSdcard has Fat32 extension storage..
You can check or edit partition your sdcard with partition tools..
Especially you can partition sdcard (Ext2,3,4 etc)..
And linking app with Link2SD app..
You know?

 

[Felim_Doyle]

I know how to format and partition an SD card and I am familiar with the various formats which Android supports. However, I would like to know if using a format such as ext2 will give more efficient use of the space on the SD card. Using FAT32 has the advantage of portability between devices such as Windows PCs as well as non-Android phones, tablets and cameras so I would only be willing to lose that if I gained better use of the space on the SD card.

Alternatively, could there be some other reason why apps seem to occupy significantly more space when installed to the SD card than when stored on the internal storage?