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1

Hi, I recently purchased a 64gb usb memory stick from another manufacturer to load my music on to play in my car.

Trouble is, the car only recognises FAT32 and the stick couldn’t be formatted to that.

I have a 4gb SanDisk Cruzer Edge that works fine but need a larger capacity. 

Do all SanDisk Cruzers come with a factory default format of FAT32?

2

FAT32 isn’t designed to support drives larger than 32 GB.  Thus SanDisk memory sticks larger than 32 GB are formatted as exFAT.  I suspect your new 64 GB memory stick is formatted as exFAT also.

3

Thanks.  So a 16gb will be FAT32? My car can only deal with about 2000 songs and the 16gb holds about 4000.

4

32 GB and smaller should be FAT32 formatted out of the box.  Have fun.

5

Thanks.I think it’s all cleared up now. I just know that files 32Gb and below needs to be Fat32.

6

i used rufus to create the live boot usb stick

7

got a 32 gig scan cruzer and it only sees 8gb because I used it as a live boot usb and now i cant clear it no matter how many times i format it… I’m thinking it has a Master boot Record in Linux, but I’m not sure… how to format? thanks for any help

8

Is this correct?

I recently purchased 64GB ‘Dual Drive USB Type-C’ and ‘Ultra Flair’ drives and out of the box they were formatted FAT32.

SanDisk Global Customer Care FIRST told me that the drives should be formatted exFAT, but when I told them that the drives I had purchased were formatted FAT32, they THEN told me that the drives were genuine… ??

9

Here’s a SanDisk link to formatting a Dual drive.

Formatting SanDisk Dual Drive and iXpand products in FAT32 format using third-party Windows applications

It indicates that SanDisk doesn’t make large drives formatted as FAT32 but 3rd party apps can be used to do it.

#SanDiskUserRewards

10

My problem is whether the USB flash drives I have bought are genuine.

I bought a 64GB Dual Drive Type-C on eBay and when unpacked it was formatted FAT32.

I asked on a Linux forum whether to use FAT32 or NTFS, and was advised to use exFAT.

Reading online about exFAT, I read that SanDisk large drives were formatted exFAT, and that fake
large drives were often formatted FAT32. I was therefore concerned that the drive might be fake.

I then bought an Ultra Flair 64GB on Amazon and that was also formatted FAT32.

I contacted SanDisk Global® Customer Care, and they confirmed that 64GB drives were formatted exFAT, but also that my FAT32 drives were genuine ??

SanDisk_Dual_Drive_USB_Type-C_#3.jpg
SanDisk_Dual_Drive_USB_Type-C_#3.jpg903×485 62.5 KB

11

Apparently the drives you have are genuine SanDisk drives but someone had them before you bought them and formatted them to FAT32. Maybe to help people with large drives and devices that don’t support exFAT drives.

#SanDiskUserRewards

12

Thanks, but the drives were all sealed in seemingly normal SanDisk packaging, and while three were purchased on Amazon and eBay, the last was purchased at full price from an authorised supplier…

So something isn’t right, various possibilities including:

A mistake on my part, but I’m a Linux user and have checked very carefully;

Elaborate counterfeit drives that somehow aren’t detected by SanDisk;

And ultimately, the possibility of a SanDisk production error.

Could a stock ‘USB Dual Drive Type_C’ 64GB drive possibly be checked?

13

It seems most unlikely that someone else had all the drives purchased from different sources before I bought them and had reformatted them to FAT32.

That leaves a limited number of possibilities, as stated in my April 25 post.

So could someone please check a stock ‘USB Dual Drive Type-C’ 64GB drive in case there has been a long-running undetected production change or error?

Chris.