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SDCard - Fat32 or Ext3

Tags: sdcard fat32 ext3 arnova 10 g2

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Clivey

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2011/12/23

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2011/12/23 - 11:43

Morning.

Firstly, great site!

I have recently purchased a Arnova 10 G2 8GB and purchased a MicroSD 8GB Sandisk (Class 10) card.

What I cant find is information about what format is best for the SD Card. I have a Windows PC so appreciate I would have to use Gparted etc if I want to format the card as ext3.

What I need to know is what is the best format for the card? Which is faster? If I keep it as Fat32 what are the restrictions (apart for 4gb file limit) ? What are the benefits of making it ext3?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Clivey

dwl99

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2011/12/23 - 12:21

Just make it FAT32, then you can access it via Windows. I'm not sure if EXT3 would work anyway. With some versions of Android you can create an EXT3 partition on the SDcard & install apps on it with A2SD but AFAIK most versions of Gingerbread do not support it (with the exception of Cyanogenmod ROMs using the s2e app).

damo

Kingston upon hull, UK

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2011/12/23 - 17:37

Formatted mine fat 32 on my 16gig card and works fine

daft

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2011/11/22

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2011/12/23 - 17:50

Clivey said

If I keep it as Fat32 what are the restrictions (apart for 4gb file limit) ? What are the benefits of making it ext3?

Fat32 can become corrupted if you unplug from USB without clearing the write buffer. I don't use windows so don't know the terminology, but you have to be careful to dismount the arnova before detaching cable or else files can sometimes become unreadible.

MBJ

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2011/12/23 - 18:40

Would this not be the same for ext3?

finless

Stanton, Ca

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2011/12/23 - 19:49

Bottom line any time you want to remove the SD card from your PC or the Arnova you need to eject it so the files system is properly handled. On the Arnova either power off first or go into settings and eject it.

As for format. When I put in a new unformatted SD card the Arnova it formatted it as Fat32.

Bob

daft

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2011/12/23 - 22:28

MBJ said

Would this not be the same for ext3?

Fat32 is notoriously fragile vs ext3 or nfts or the apple format - see the wikipedia writeup. It isn't uncommon to for an early unplug to cause your device to puke up and claim it is so corrupt that a reset and reformat is needed. Can't swear my Arnova did it, but certainly Archos earlier designs. One of mine even pukes if you unplug too soon after eject - it needs about 5 seconds AFTER eject confirmation.

Archos (who designs arnova's) even abandoned fat32 a couple generations ago, but came back to it for compatibility. But power Archos users often do ext3 (for speed?) and possibly even nfts is now supported read only. Actually my mac refuses to eject my arnova, but I haven't had problems. With my Archos I even ignore it's armageddon messages about corruption and simply reboot and try to play each file I loaded (sometime must rewrite them).

thommo

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2012/01/02 - 11:53

im a little disapointed that the 10 g2 has a full hd playback function yet you cant get a full hd film on a sd card because of the limit of 4gb with fat32.

pointless feature which swayed me into buying it.. i hope they bring back ntfs support.