Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions [SOLVED]

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Sky Aisling
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions [SOLVED]

#1 Post by Sky Aisling »

Hello :)

I intend to format a SanDisk 64GB SDXC card that has two partitions using Gparted to create one Linux ext4 partition.

However, I notice a gold triangle with an exclamation point. What does the gold triangle with the exclamation mark mean?

Before I delete both these partitions I thought I should check to see if there is anything different in the normal procedure of reformatting a SDXC memory card in this situation.

I've not encounter this on SDHC cards before. But, this card is a SDXC.

The specs on the package are: Sandisk ultra SDXC UHS-i Card Speed up to 80mb/s 533x

I use the Gparted version included in Dpup Stretch 7.50 Distro.

Thank you in advance for your observations.
Sky

PS - I intend to use the card for everyday data storage.
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bigpup
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#2 Post by bigpup »

That partition with the gold triangle with an exclamation point.

Right click on it.
From right click menu.
Select information.
It should tell you why the gold triangle.

I will guess it is something about Gparted not supporting the exfat format.
Not much support is in Gparted for exfat.
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Semme
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#3 Post by Semme »

4U!
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<
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#4 Post by bigpup »

If this card is going to be used in a camera, phone, etc....
It may need to stay formatted exfat.
Those devices may be looking to see that format.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
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Sky Aisling
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions

#5 Post by Sky Aisling »

Thank you, Bigpup
The warning says:
Unable to read the contents of this file system!
Because of this some operations may be unavailable.
Does this mean I cannot use Gparted to reformat this device?
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions

#6 Post by Sky Aisling »

My intent is to use the card for general storage on my PC that no longer has hard drives.
I've been using an 8GB SDHC card with no issues. But, it's only 8GB, so, I thought I'd expand the storage capacity.

I thought I ordered a SDHC card but apparently either I or the company I bought the card from chose the SDXC format card to ship to me.
Probably my error.

Sky
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions

#7 Post by Sky Aisling »

Thank you Semme for the article on sdxc and exFat.
https://www.androidauthority.com/high-c ... ns-690710/
Keep in mind this article is talking about cards in Android phones.
The author of the article says that he was able to change an sdxc exFat card to a Fat32
microSD card formatted FAT32

I changed the format of the microSD to FAT32 and tried the devices that didn’t previously recognize the card and the good news is that they worked! The Xiaomi RedMi Note 2, ZTE Star 2, and the Elephone P6000 all mounted the card and where able to read the files on it. As a side test, I reformatted the card again as exFAT an put it back into the Xiaomi RedMi Note 2. As before the card wasn’t recognized, however there was a option to reformat it. When I did the RedMi Note 2 reformatted it as FAT32 and it worked!
In his wrapup he says:
Bottom line, if you have a microSD card slot in your phone it will probably work with large (>32GB) SDXC cards and if it doesn’t then a quick reformat of the card to FAT32 will likely solve your problems. As for 2TB cards, when they do eventually come out, your phone should support those as well!
However, I read nothing about GParted being used to reformat an exFat card to a Fat32. Gparted is the only tool I know of in my Puppy tool kit that can reformat media like a sdhc card or a flash drive. Also, I looked for but didn't see where the converted FAT32 could then be further formatted to Linux ext.4. Or did I miss something?

Thank you Bigpup for the Gparted Supported features check list.
Doesn't look very hopeful does it?


Sky
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#8 Post by Semme »

Sky,

While I've seen a few ways to address the task, none are warranted. The most effective way around this is to go back to where you purchased this device and request an exchange. It is far and away easier to aquire hardware Linux can work with than the other way around.

Make Life easy - Be productive.
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions

#9 Post by Sky Aisling »

Hi Semme, Yes, that is what is needed, a return of the card. I'm on another month lockdown, so, I'll donate the card by mail to someone who can use it their camera or cell phone and re-order an SDHC card. Probably 32 Gig as that seems the highest the SDHC go in size. That'll work.

Thanks all for the education of SD cards and Gparted.

Sky
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#10 Post by bigpup »

HOLD ON!

If you are sure the computers sd card reader can see and use this card.
It should work OK.
Most host devices built after 2010 should be SDXC compatible.
Gparted can probably delete the partitions and make new ones.

What I would try.
Use Gparted.
make a new partition table (type: msdos).
Gparted->Device->Create Partition Table....
Partition and format the drive as you like.

If all you are going to do is use it for data.
one partition formatted ext 3 or 4 will work best for Linux.

fat32 format is just the computer standard for formats.
Everything can read and write to fat32.

I have done it with several 128GB sdxc cards.


Gparted can not do much with exfat.
But it has no problem doing a partition table, partitioning, and formatting to other formats.

Note:
Making the partition table msdos, is to make sure you are using one, that is well supported, by all the software in Puppy.

Note:
Some cards have a physical lock switch on the side of card.
Not sure if yours does.
Unlock the memory card. There is a Lock switch on the left side of the SD card. Make sure the Lock switch is slid up (unlock position). You will not be able to modify or delete the contents on the memory card if it is locked.
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions

#11 Post by Sky Aisling »

Bigpup, Yes, the machine recognizes the card. By 'recognizing' I mean the icon of the card immediately shows up on the desktop screen in the lower left corner where partitions of drives normally show up.

Gparted views the card.

Edit Additon: There is a lock on the card and it is slide up.

Bigpup writes:
Most host devices built after 2010 should be SDXC compatible.
▶—— BASE SYSTEM ——◀

PC Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
Product Name: HP HDX 18 Notebook PC

Motherboard Vendor: Quanta
Product Name: 3610

BIOS Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Version: F.24
Release Date: 06/16/2009



Bigpup writes:
Use Gparted.
make a new partition table (type: msdos).
Gparted->Device->Create Partition Table....
There are two partitions on the drive:
unallocated 16MiB
/dev/mmcblk0p1 exfat 59.46 GIB

The option of 'new' is grayed out on the exfat partition. 'Delete' is available. EDIT: I'll delete the exfat partition using the device option and reformat first to a msdos partition then to a ext3 partition.
The File System Support in this Gparted shows that it can create ext2-4 partitions.
I'll leave the 'unallocated' partition alone? I can live with the 59.4GB of space, no problem there.
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#12 Post by pcplague2 »

Deleting an creating a new partition normally recovers that "dead" space.
SD card readers have a switch or light beam that detects the position of the switch on the card, so check that if gives write error.
Older puppies had problems with ext4 so I prefer to use ext3.
Good luck
Paulo Pestana <- All the way from Portugal 8)
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions

#13 Post by Sky Aisling »

Hi Bigpup, Semme, pcplague2,

How's this look?
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#14 Post by bigpup »

Sure that looks OK.

But from your posted info on what you may have done.
You kind of went the long way to do it.

One question.
In Gparted->View->Device Information
What does it show for partition table?



I posted doing it this way, because it gets everything to a known condition.
Making a new partition table clears out everything, plus gives you a clean fresh table.
(deletes all partitions, when a new partition table is made)
bigpup wrote:Use Gparted.
make a new partition table (type: msdos).
Gparted->Device->Create Partition Table....
Partition and format the drive as you like.

If all you are going to do is use it for data.
one partition formatted ext 3 or 4 will work best for Linux.
To use a drive.
Need a partition table.
At least one partition formatted in a readable format.

First, you make a partition table or use the one that is already there. However, the old one may have errors in it.
Second, make a partition or partitions, and format them. Using all the un-allocated space or space you made un-allocated, by deleting or resizing partitions.

Note:
You are never going to see 64GB for the drive.
It is all about what number is used to represent size.
Manufactures always use the one that makes it look bigger.
It is the bits or bytes thing and converting to a GB number.
Plus some space is used for file system (format) information.
That is that used number.
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions

#15 Post by Sky Aisling »

Bigpup writes:
One question.
In Gparted->View->Device Information
What does it show for partition table?
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#16 Post by bigpup »

Good.
msdos is the partition table type that works best with Puppy software.

Looks like you now have a usable sdxc card.

I use one of these to boot laptop computers.
It is a micro sdxc card.
I have it setup, with about 10 different, frugal installed Puppy versions, and a boot loader menu, to select from.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
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Formatting a SDXC card's two partitions

#17 Post by Sky Aisling »

Bigpup writes:
Looks like you now have a usable sdxc card.

I use one of these to boot laptop computers.
It is a micro sdxc card.
I have it setup, with about 10 different, frugal installed Puppy versions, and a boot loader menu, to select from.
I've often wanted to set up a medium where I had multiple Pups to boot in order to compare them and play with them.
I like your idea of using a memory card to do that.
Or... In playing around with the machine a few weeks ago I took out both hard drives as one seemed bad. I've had time to look at the drives and discovered one is functioning fine. Also, I might be able to rescue the 'bad' drive now that I know the DD command (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M) that you folks taught me last week. I could put the good drive back into the machine and use it to hold a kennel of pups? But, that is for another thread. :D

I'm curious about this re-formatted SDXC card. It appears that what I as a legacy programmer call a 'header' is 1.23 GB in size. That seems like a lot of data space for what I think is a header. What's in all that space?

Thank you for the idea and, of course, your help with this situation.

Grateful,
Sky
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#18 Post by bigpup »

This is basically what the used space is.
Why the size it is.
https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/formatting.html
Looks like Gparted is set to make it 2%.
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#19 Post by bigpup »

I've often wanted to set up a medium where I had multiple Pups to boot in order to compare them and play with them.
Frugalpup Installer
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=114340

On my micro sdxc card.
I used Frugalpup Installer to install a bunch of different Puppy versions, as individual frugal installs.
Then used Frugalpup Installers, boot loader installer, to install a boot loader, with entries for all. When run, it makes entries for all it finds on the drive.

To make the micro sdxc card boot on any computer (old style bios or UEFI). I told the boot loader installer to install both type boot loaders. Old style and UEFI.

Also, for UEFI computers.
Partitioned the drive with two partitions.

First one a small 300mb, formatted fat32, flagged boot.
All boot loader stuff goes on it. Used as boot partition.
(that is a UEFI requirement for a boot partition)

Rest of drive, a partition formatted ext 3 or 4.
All the frugal installs go on it.

Note:
Frugalpup Installer is a little hard to first use. It gives a lot of options and asks you to select stuff.
On main window.
Puppy button does the installs.
Boot button installs the boot loader(s).
Does have a good help info if you take time to read it.

But we are Puppy users! We need no stinking help info! :lol: :lol:
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