Hello -

Will someone please tell me how to 'format' an SD card with the N800? I'm sure I can figure it out by trial and error - but thought it would probably be easier just to ask.

Thanks!

- Paul

You can just hook up your N800 to a PC with the USB cable and your PC sees the SD card as removable disk. Then you just right click on it and select Format... (Assuming you are using Windows? If your PC is Linux the method is certainly different...)

Or if you have a card reader/writer you can use that as well to do the same in Windows. It is likely faster.

Depending on WHY you want to format the SD card, the Windows command line might be a better alternative to the Explorer GUI, since you can control cluster size. Defaults may be appropriate for general use, but storing lots of small files (e.g., map tiles for Maemo Mapper) is more space efficient with smaller clusters.

For exact syntax and usage rules, type "FORMAT /?" from the prompt.

The switches /FS:FAT32 /A:512 specify FAT32 with 512 byte clusters, the minimum for SD volumes up to 2GB. Larger cards require larger allocation units due to limits on cluster count. For the tightest packing, use /A:1024 on 4GB cards, and if you have the SDHC kernel patch working, /A:2048 on 8GB.

There's a tradeoff using tiny SD clusters: write speed will be noticeably slower. This is OK in the application I described, which is mostly read oriented after loading the map content. I haven't seen much penalty (if any) on read speed, although you could probably find one by benchmarking.

or start Filemanager, select Memory card->Removeable memory card->Format
Not sure why Format is greyed out on Internal memory card on mine-swap file enabled maybe?