-
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 79
SD card preparation
The Raspberry Pi can only boot from a FAT32 or FAT16-formatted disk, however some operating systems such as Windows make it difficult to format larger disks with a FAT32 file system as it is considered a "legacy" format and not really designed for large partitions.
On this page you can find some workarounds for formatting large SD cards as FAT32.
Windows' built-in format GUI will only allow you to format disks greater than 32GB with the NTFS or exFAT file systems; neither of which are suitable for booting a Raspberry Pi.
One of the easiest tools to use to format a large FAT32 partition is guiformat by Ridgecrop Consultants.
If there is one existing partition on the SD card and you just want to reformat it as FAT32:
- Launch guiformat.
- Select the SD card's partition, accept the default allocation size and leave "Quick Format" checked - there's no need to do a full format.
- Click Start, and wait for your SD card to be formatted.
- You can now proceed with the rest of the quick-start guide in the main README.
If your card has previously been used for a Linux installation it may have multiple partitions on it. To erase the card completely and reformat it with a single large FAT32 partition:
- Launch an elevated Command Prompt (Start --> type "Command" --> right-click and select "Run as Administrator").
- Type
diskpart
and press Enter, followed bylist disk
and Enter again. - Find the SD card in the list (check the Size column carefully), and type
select disk
followed by the number of the disk (e.g.select disk 2
), and press Enter.- Double-check you have the correct disk! Do not continue if you are unsure, as you may erase a PC disk and lose data!
- Type
clean
, press Enter, and wait for a few seconds. This will erase the partition table from the card. - Type
create part primary
, and press Enter. - Type
list part
and press Enter. You now have a single partition covering the entire SD card. - Type
exit
and press Enter. - Launch guiformat.
- Select the SD card's partition, accept the default allocation size and leave "Quick Format" checked - there's no need to do a full format.
- Click Start, and wait for your SD card to be formatted.
- You can now proceed with the rest of the quick-start guide in the main README.
Β© Dale Whinham 2020-2022. Released under the GNU General Public License v3.0.