50g freezes on SD card access

[Simone Cerica]

(01-10-2020 08:33 AM)JDW Wrote:  

(01-10-2020 08:18 AM)ijabbott Wrote:  Was the MicroSD card formatted as FAT32 or FAT16?

edryer needs to answer that question, but like I said before, my friend told me he formatted his SD card inside his 50g and he said it formatted it with FAT32. That contradicts what someone earlier in this thread said about FAT16 being the best. I would think the 50g would format cards in whatever format it considers "best." Which would indicate it thinks FAT32 is best. I've not tested formatting an SD card in my own 50g in a long while so I cannot say anything one way or another right now.

The calculator will format SD cards of <= 32 MB capacity using FAT16, for higher capacity cards it will use FAT32.
For 1 or 2 GB cards there is the problem that the calculator takes several seconds to access or access the card itself. This is because the calculator has to map a huge number of clusters. But it only happens the first time you access the SD card and in any case this does not slow down the calculation operations. Up to 512 MB capacity cards, access is almost immediate.
To overcome this drawback it is possible to format 1 or 2 GB cards using FAT16 which allocates less clusters, through the PC and a memory card reader using the DOS FORMAT command:

C:\> FORMAT F: /FS:FAT /Q

assuming that F: is the mounted memory card.

Of course it can also be done with GNU/Linux:

# mkdosfs -F 16 /dev/sda1

assuming that /dev/sda1 is the path of the mounted SD card.

But remember that to reuse the same card on other devices, such as digital cameras, it is good to reformat with FAT32:

C:\> FORMAT F: /FS:FAT32 /Q on DOS

# mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1 on GNU/Linux


Regards,
Simone