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Format Secure Digital Card Fat32 or NTFS?

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by 13thHouR, Sep 21, 2008.

  1. 13thHouR

    13thHouR Guest

    Other than NTFS having substantially higher overhead in terms of wasted disk space using the NTFS file system, is there any reason not to format a secure digital card to this format to enable use of compressed and sparse files ect?

    Is it even possible?

    can i do a; C:\> CONVERT H: /fs:ntfs

    "H" being the drive to covert, de da de da.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 21, 2008
  2. colw

    colw Active member

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    Normally have two format options - FAT or FAT32 (right click on properties).

    I use FAT option for SD cards.
     
  3. 13thHouR

    13thHouR Guest

    @ colw

    thanks for the reply but i was enquiring if it is possible to convert SD to NTFS.

    The 16gig card i have is already FAT32 but the file structure has its limitations and wanted to know if it was possible without damage to convert to the NT format.
     
  4. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    I don't see any wasted space with NTFS. Due to the differing versions of 'Gigabyte' (i.e. a GB being 1000MB on the card, but 1024 in any file system) a 16GB drive will turn out to be 14.9GB or so in NTFS, 14.7 in FAT32, and obviously FAT32 can't store files bigger than 4096MB.
    I don't know whether you can convert from FAT32 to NTFS on the fly, but you should be able to run the card in NTFS from a clean format at least.
     

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