Format 8GB SDHC card
 

Sorry if I didn't search well enough to find this answer:

I am trying to reformat my 8GB SDHC card using sfdisk, then mkfs.vfat. All seems to go well with rewriting the partition table, and when I use the mkfs command that seems to work. When I remount the card and look at the file sizes it only registers at 2GB, even though I set up a single partition for the full card.

Commands used:

sfdisk -uM /dev/mmcblk1

,7717, b
,,
,,
,,

mkfs.vfat -S 1024 /dev/mmcblk1p1

Any help would be appreciated.

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

To my knowladge the N800 wont register more than 2GIGs with the stock kernel.... If you formatded the card in xterm than I am sure is using vfat16 and thats where the problem is. You need to stick it in a PC running Linux or Windows and formated to fat32... I had the same issue with the 4GIG card... I solved it using gparted and formatting the card to fat32. You can use the SDHC Kernel to enable 8GIG cards withouth having to go thru this hasle...

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

Stock kernel can handle 4GB non-SDHC cards too. The only problem is formatting the card in file manager on N800. Best is to use USB cable and format it on PC.


SDHC kernel only allows you to use SDHC cards (currently 4 and 8 GB). You still need to go through this hassle if you want to reformat the card (mostly not needed as the card already comes preformatted).

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

Fat16 (which is what the card formats at) can only handle 2 gig filesystems. Make a 2 gig then make the rest ext2 or something for data. Sorry, but thems the breaks... maybe mount the rest of the space to a folder within the 2 gig slice.. but still 2 gigs.

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

All- Thank you for the info. I do have the SDHC kernel going, and I did format using my PC in the end. This doesn't make sense to me though. I was able to make the partition fat32 - so is it that mkfs.vfat only formats at fat16? Also - is my linux box formated to > 2 GB slices because it's ext 2 or 3 (I guess I could just look....)? Can linux of any variety format fat32 > 2 GB?

cheers

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

fat32 can be 16 gig iirc, and ext2 or ext3 based on the extents.. is limited to several terabytes

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

So - when it formated, with a partition set to ~7.5GB, fat32, why didn't it use the 7.5GB?

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

There's a -F parameter you give to mkfs.vfat which determines the FAT type to use, -F 12, -F 16 or -F 32... the default will vary between 12 and 16 depending on whatever fits best for filesystem size, which would explain why you ended up with FAT16.

You have to explicity specify -F 32 to get a FAT32 filesystem.

Here's the man page for mkfs.vfat.

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

I did that when I was trying various things last night, but it still only formated to 2GB with a 7.5GB partition set up. I'll double check though tonight just in case I am mis-remembering what I did exactly.

Re: Format 8GB SDHC card
 

Maybe it is just in issue with the free space indicator. I have seen that in old (and not so old) Windows systems. The partition will be big and formatted correctly to the full capacity but the free space will be reported incorrectly ... only up to some max. Try nearly filling up the partition with stuff and see if it will take it and if the free space is reported correctly below 2 GB. Know that FAT32 can have only <2GB per file so you will need a few separate big files to fill it up.

Doing:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/mmc1/bigfileofzeros1 bs=1M count=2000

a few times with incrementing names of "of=" should do the trick
... or just cart over a pile of movies and such via USB.

You should consider reporting a bug on this to the maemo bugzilla regardless.