Formatting the SD card.

Hello. I do not have a Fuze as of yet, but will be purchasing one in a couple of days or so. I just want to know everything I need to in order to get it working immediately with minimal fuss. I am also going to purchase a 4 or an 8 gigabyte microsdhc card with it. Should I just leave the card as-is and pop it into the player, or does it need to be formatted (for better performance)? If so, what filesystem: FAT, FAT 16, or FAT32? Do I need to select a specific allocation size (I have another card and there is no option to change it from “default allocation size” in Windows)?    

 Or, can it be formatted with the player and the player will automatically assign the best settings to the card? Will I be able to do this without wiping the internal memory? Thanks. 

Great question.

For best performance a larger Allocation size than the Windows default is desirable.

For Cards > 2 GB use FAT32 with Allocation size = 32K  (you can specify it using DOS command prompt)

For Cards 2 GB or less,  the best performance is to format as FAT16. Default cluster size is OK.

You cant currently format the card using the players UI,  it formats the internal memory.

Message Edited by sansafix on 10-16-2008 12:11 PM

Thanks. I found that using the disk management utility, it will show all the possible cluster sizes before proceeding to format (This is good, because I’m not so command line-savvy). However, I did get a message saying “The cluster size is too big for the selected filesystem”, but I assume that was only due to the one-gigabyte capacity of the card, is this correct?

Se my updated solution for cards < 2 GB

Hello!  I just picked up a Sandisk 8 GB class 2 card for my wife’s Fuze I got it at a good price $24.99…  It’s still in the package at the moment…  Can I just slide the new car into her player and use as usaule… She is not going to be swapping out cards. At this point it will be left in the player and will be used as expanded internal memory so to speak…  Can I assume this Sandisk card is format-ed at  Fat 32 from the factory?  Thanks!  George

Hello George!

Yes, the SanDisk cards are ready to run, right out of the box.  Songs added to the card will show under “songs” with a little SD card logo too.

With the Fuze, you can also load video on the µSD card.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

Great!  Thanks for the reply Bob!  George

I have a couple cards I didn’t format , change them, and they work fine.  Actually I don’t think I formatted any of them until this new I just got a new 8gb one (Class 4, $39 at radioshack on sale).  I just formatted it because I was having problems (think it was my computer, not the card) and saw this post.

But is it really necessary to format them?  I haven’t had problems yet with any of the cards.

The only reason to format is if you are having problems or somehow get corrupted song files on it. Otherwise, leave it alone. :wink:

Thanks for everyones input. Sansafix, I was just using a spare 1gb to test the procedure. Based on the mixed opinions, do you think it would make that much of a difference if I formatted it instead of leaving it as is? Only reason is because I intend to put about 10 gigs of music on this, and I would prefer to have a snappier database refresh time if I need to swap out a card.

@tapeworm wrote:
The only reason to format is if you are having problems or somehow get corrupted song files on it. Otherwise, leave it alone. :wink:

Thanks for the info.  I think the problem was me… I was trying to convert several 30 minute videos at once and it seems to work better doing one at a time.  Which is fine, it doesn’t matter either way, they get on there.