Format SD Cards to Fat32 or NTFS


D4damage

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Dec 3, 2008
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What's the easiest way to format sd cards on the pandora ?


I've tried using gparted but it just ends up corrupting the cards.


I've followed the below post to set up a ext3 partition which worked fine, but I've lost compatibility with Windows systems:


When I first inserted the card it did nothing, didn't appear on the desktop. Opened up terminal and typed: sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0 (use mmcblk1 for the second slot)





't' then '83' to change the partition type to linux, then 'w' to save.






sudo mkfs.ext3 -m 0 /dev/mmcblk0p1






Then wait about 10 minutes while it formats.



Is there a similar command to the above I could run to set my cards as fat32 or ntfs ?
 
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The "Panasonic SD format utility" (for Windows) has been reported to work well, as it did with me also. Mind you, I chose quick format only, not a full format, and selected FAT32.


Panasonic has it here on their site.
 
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To format on the Pandora, you need dosfstools package



Code:
sudo opkg update

sudo opkg install dosfstools

Note that this will install some things to your NAND, possibly filling up another 30-40MB of space. After which you'll have "mkfs.msdos" which can create FAT32 paritions.


Or you can just format it on your desktop.
 
To format on the Pandora, you need dosfstools package



Code:
sudo opkg update

sudo opkg install dosfstools

Note that this will install some things to your NAND, possibly filling up another 30-40MB of space. After which you'll have "mkfs.msdos" which can create FAT32 paritions.


Or you can just format it on your desktop.

Thanks, I'll give it a try.
 
I tried that using:


sudo mkfs.msdos -m 0 /dev/mmcblk0p1


Unfortunatly this didn't format the card as expected. I couldn't browse to it from some applications. What would be the command for putting at fat32 or ntfs file system on it ?
 
Open up a terminal and type: sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0 (use mmcblk1 for the second slot)


't' then 'b' to change the partition type to FAT32, then 'w' to save.


sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1
 
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