SD Card Format

[flameboy5073]

Hi I have downloaded the raspbrian OS for my pi onto an SD card. I later realised that it was the wrong class !! I now want to format my SD card. When I tried using windows 7 it only formatted what it could read (a tiny amount). How can I completley format the SD card using windows 7?

Thanks

[moderator comment] you can't use any form of Windows! go here for the answer at the end of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=91&t=13138&start=50#p1478582

[calebzulawski]

To format your card in Windows 7, open "Computer", right click your SD card, and click "Format...". You can either quick format or full format your card; I doubt it will make any difference to you.

[moderator comment] don't use windows to format your card, it won't work, read the end of this thread.

[bredman]

This is the official tool from the SD card organisation. It should format any SD card.
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/
Click the download link on the left of the page.

[MrPie]

No these answers don't help. The SD card only shows 56MB as it's size no matter what I format it with. It's an 8gb card. So obviously something is causing it to be read incorrectly. Any help would be appreciated because as of right now my 8gb SD card is useless.

[moderators comment] this user doesn't understand that windows doesn't understand Linux partitions.

[MrPie]

Okay so I found the fix to my problem.

If the above didn't work for you either use the "HP USB format tool" (found here: http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197), thanks to Babbage6913 for mentioning this in another thread.

Literally nothing else I used could see that the SD card was anything other than 56MB so when I formatted it, it was formatting 56MB and that's it.

[itimpi]

Literally nothing else I used could see that the SD card was anything other than 56MB so when I formatted it, it was formatting 56MB and that's it.

That would be because only the FAT32 partition was being seen - not the much larger Linux partition(s). This is a typical limitation under Windows systems.

I have always used the formatted from the SD Association to reclaim space (https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/). It has an option to use the physical size of the media when formatting ignoring partitions.

[mad-hatter]

Hello,

If your brave and careful, you can use a tool like GParted.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted ... o/download

If you need more help just ask.
Thre is plenty of info on the internet about using this program.

Regards

[raspberrypiguy1]

I use a very nice community made tool called wipePi.

Here is a link to where you can download it from the forum:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... pi#p133847

AND MAKE SURE YOUR SD IS IN DRIVE Z... Sorry that bit is quite important.

The Raspberry Pi Guy

[Daan]

I solved by formatting the SD card in my camera

In Windows it only showed 56MB (even after using SD formatter) after using my camera (Nikon) it showed the 4GB again

[ukscone]

with the sd card formatter you have to select the adjust size option to get the sd card back to full size

[aztecoso08]

This is the official tool from the SD card organisation. It should format any SD card.
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3
Click the download link on the left of the page.

I had the same problem, only 56MB would show. I used the program from this link. I formatted with the "FULL (overwrite)" option, which took a while, then the full SD card was available to me again. Thanks bredman

[JohnL4]

btw, This is the thread that solved my problem.

symptoms were monitor wouldn't display anything (cycled between trying to display and "no signal" message on monitor). Pi leds: PWR light on (red), ACT light blinking (green).

Hardware Config was:

- HDMI-to-DVI cable into my monitor (with a VGA cable also coming from my desktop),
- USB mouse/keyboard cables to an A-B switch choosing between desktop and Pi,
- power cable from powered USB hub which claimed to supply sufficient volts and amps.
- no ethernet or any other usb cables plugged in
- Polaroid 16 GB class 10 SDHC card

Turned out the only solution I needed (after worrying about voltage problems from powered hub and hdmi safe mode in config.txt) was to download the official SD card formatter (used version 4.0) and do a full overwrite (autosize OFF) format of my new SD card, and then reflash it.

Success!

[jbharrell3]

Windows 7 will also work effectively. The problem is in the partitioning of the device. Someone mentioned that it was only seeing the 56MB FAT16 partition usually mounted on '/boot' and that is exactly correct.

More importantly, it does not see the Linux 'ext4' partition that is created from the RPi OS installation. However, that's not all of the problem -- even if it could recognize this, it may not be the entire capacity of the SD card.

You can use Windows 7 to accomplish the format of the device but you have to run another tool before you can format the disk. From the Windows 7 Start Menu, select and right-click the 'Computer' link. On the pop-up menu, select the Manage option.

All done -- ready for Windows.

In the Computer Management tool, select the option under 'Storage' that says 'Disk Management'. On the right side of the management window, you will see a list of volume names at the top and a list of devices (DIsk 0, Disk 1, CD ROM 0, etc.) at the bottom. Select a partition on the device, right click, and select the 'Delete Volume' option.

Repeat this step for the other allocated volumes on this device. Once you have removed all of the volumes on this device, select the unallocated space, right click, create a volume, and format it.

[kbailey]

Hi I have downloaded the raspbrian OS for my pi onto an SD card. I later realised that it was the wrong class !! I now want to format my SD card. When I tried using windows 7 it only formatted what it could read (a tiny amount). How can I completley format the SD card using windows 7?

Thanks

Class refers to speed. I have used several Sd's of assorted classes on the local pi, and all it did was hamper speed slightly when I used a low class card. that and get chewing gum stuck under everything...l And I have mine bumped up 2 notches on the overclock scale.

[socialdefect]

There are not many things I like about HP but I really LOVE their formatting tool. It has actually been a reason for me several times to install Windows in order to bring my phones, Ipods and other things I installed Linux on back to life when nothing else would work. If there's a program I can recommend anyone looking for a formatting tool its the HP formatting tool!

Thanks for reminding me of this tool for I have multiple USB keys that neither Linux, BSD nor OSX recognize anymore Hope it will run in a virtual Windows 2000 for that's all I have....

Thanks

[LethPhaos]

Not wanting to start a new thread, as issue is related to this thread, so a reply instead:
For me, even a format with the SDFormatter v4 doesn't work. Even with FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT ON it doesn't recuperate the space. Tried with Win7 and EaseUs Partition Master as well, with no luck. Card stays on 55MB. I don't have the possibility to flash to FAT32, only FAT, NTFS and ext.


This is what I did to get to this problem:
- Brand new Pi and SD card, yay!
- Flash the image 2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian.img to the SD, success!
- Boot the Pi with the SD card, success!
- Config utility starts up. I start going through all the options, one by one. One of the options is to resize a partition to full size or something, without really thinking it through I execute it. In seconds that completes.
- I go on with the encoding settings, and while I'm doing this I decide I want to start over and leave everything as default, so I unplug the Pi
- I try to format the SD and reflash the image, but SD doesn't show full capacity, and is in FAT.

I'm afraid my SD card is bricked... Any ideas?

[Irre]

I think I used SDFormatter with Size adjustment OFF, but I'm not sure.

Don't give up. Since you can boot linux, you can also fix it from there I think.

Log in to a terminal:

root # (sudo) fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
remove all partition
add only one partion, use default values
change Id to "c" W95 FAT32 (LBA)
write new parttion table

Now is the SD-card "destroyed" for linux, but windows will like to format it.
shutdown

Move SD-card to windows mashine. Now Windows WILL format the whole card...

[LethPhaos]

Just an update for future readers, the SD card was recovered. I booted into Ubuntu live and using the GUI I managed to format to FAT, allowing me to use it in Windows again.
It didn't want to format straight away, ant it didn't want to delete the partition, because of some error. By converting the volume to Ext filesystem first, I managed to delete the partition, and make a new partition of 4GB in FAT.

[Cloudcentric]

The GParted LiveCD/USB can be used to remove all partitions and format the SD Card to one FAT32 partition, smaller download than Ubuntu LiveCDat 133MB

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

[PaulusFirky]

Hey everyone

I have found a way to make an SD card ready and fully readable for formatting on Windows 7.

Download the Raspbmc "Network Image" installer (from http://www.raspbmc.com/download/ and open the program once it's ready. Select the SD card you wish to format from the list, then there is an option in the bottom right to "Restore device for formatting". Once I had completed this my SD card showed the full capacity in 'Computer'. From here I was able to format the card by going to 'Computer', right clicking on the SD card and selecting 'Format...'. I have not had any problems with this so far, but if anything comes up, I'll let you all know.

Hope this helps a few people! If anyone requires more help just ask

[SirLagz]

The GParted LiveCD/USB can be used to remove all partitions and format the SD Card to one FAT32 partition, smaller download than Ubuntu LiveCDat 133MB

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

I've created a custom version of GParted that I've called PiParted which can do this for you as well.
Details can be found on my blog @ http://sirlagz.net

[yanngael]

Hi all!

When upgrading "wheezy" from 2012-10-28 to 2013-02-09, something happened and my RPI would not boot up anymore so I had to wipe the SD card out to reinstall it using the "easy" procedure. Unfortunately, I ran into the same problems as mentioned here, except that neither HP USB Format Tool nor SDFormat did work for me: my SD card remained "stuck" on a size of 56MB. After some search, I found this post that did the trick: it uses Windows 7 DiskPart tool and, after running it twice, I recover the 4GB of my SD card. I hope that this could be helpful to others.

Cheers!
Yann

PS. My SD card is reported as "Richoh SD Card".

[Houthacker]

Using yanngael's resolution (http://www.electroons.com/blog/2013/02/ ... rry-pi-os/): don't forget to remove the SD Card after this procedure and re-insert afterwards.

[apurbaks]

You can use diskpart to this.
http://brucesbraindump.blogspot.ae/2013 ... -from.html

Regards
Apurba K Saha

[wedgec]

I've been really impressed with the Pi being a total linux newbie when I bought it, but I'm really disappointed at how difficult I'm finding it to reclaim my SD card. I'm currently working my way through all the options in this thread but there should be a set way to solve this IMO.