I need help formatting a micro sd card

I almost posted this on Facebook and G+, but then I remembered that the point of Daily December is to post whatever I want. Maybe there will be answers to this question that are helpful for others, and I’d prefer that those answers live here, instead of a social network I don’t control.

So. My question:

I have a 128gb micro SD card that I am trying desperately to partition and format so I can load NOOBS onto it.I can’t use the full card as a single, formatted partition because the hardware isn’t able to read exFAT. I understand that I need to format a primary partition to 32GB, filetype FAT32, and make it bootable. I can then extract NOOBS onto that partition, and install as usual.
 
I can format this card to one huge partition using SD Formatter, but then I get stuck. The problem is, I can’t figure out fdisk and parted (the documentation on that is a little tough for me to follow), and gparted isn’t letting me resize the one massive partition. I’ve tried to resize and create partitions in Apple’s Disk Utility and in whatever the utility is in Windows, without success.
 
Does anyone have a link to, like, “fdisk and/or parted for idiots” or something like that, that I can use? I’m so frustrated and I feel so dumb right now.
NOTE: FOUR HOURS LATER — SUCCESS!
Okay, so I tried all the command line tools I could, I tried Disk Utility on my Mac, and even though I understood what I was doing, and followed my steps exactly, even using cfdisk (which is amazing and will be in my toolbox forever, now), I could write the partition changes to the disk, but still couldn’t get any system (OS X, Linux, or Windows) to recognize the device. But then I used Partition Wizard, as recommended, and it just worked. I made an 8GB bootable primary FAT32 partition, and then made two more 32GB primary partitions for good measure, even though I probably didn’t have to do that. The rest of the space on the card is currently unallocated.
On the one hand, YAY! It’s working! I can use this SD card and I’ve saved myself a walk to the store! On the other hand, Damn. I wish I knew what Partition Wizard was doing that none of my other tools were doing, so that I learned something from this whole experience, and that I can share that knowledge with anyone else who finds themselves wondering how to fix a similar problem.I don’t feel frustrated, but I still feel dumb. At the moment, I’ll take it.
Thanks for your help, everyone!

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39 thoughts on “I need help formatting a micro sd card”

      1. Wil’s idea that responses will help others has succeeded. I’m a grizzled old UNIX admin who is comfortable using fdisk and parted, but had never heard of cfdisk and upon learning about it think I might just use that in a pinch – sometimes a richer UI is nice to have.

  8. For MBR, cfdisk is fine. gparted should work too. Maybe try some YouTube vids or something. Not sure why you don’t just delete the whole partition table in gparted and start from scratch though?

    1. May I say “fuck html”?

      fdisk /dev/whatever
      o [enter] n [enter] p [enter] [enter] +32G [enter] t [enter] c [enter] w [enter]
      mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/whatever1

      1. This looks pretty accurate to me off the top of my head without double checking.

        Linux admin for Coca-Cola, the Coca-Cola bottlers, Sony, NBCUniversal, and Keurig coffee (Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) here. (yes I’m a busy guy)

  11. http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/fdisk_partitioning.html You need to create 2 partitions, both primary is ok.

    Then you need to use https://linux.die.net/man/8/mkfs (or mkfs.vfat) to create the file system on to the partition. I’d guess the second partition could be a ext4 (but set it up so that it doesn’t have journaling which should reduce wear: http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/11898/format-partition-with-ext4-but-without-a-journal )

    I’ve found googling “man subject” works quite well – ie “man fdisk”, “man mkfs” – for finding the raw options, and usually other results that are related and helpful. Man pages are linux/unix documentation pages.

  15. Have you tried Etcher? I use it for all my Raspbian SD cards and I burn a fair few pi-topOS cards for work too. It’s pretty easy, but I don’t know if it’d work with a big SD card… worth a try?

  16. You could have started at Wikipedia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fdisk doesn’t have a manual but does have a link to http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/fdisk_partitioning.html and https://linux.die.net/man/8/fdisk for useful hints.
    But as you wants to install NOOBS for the R-Pi, aren’t their instructions clear enough? https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/noobs.md

    As the SD card is over 32 GB, you also need to follow these instructions: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/sdxc_formatting.md

    But I wonder why you even need an SD card that big as you basically just need it for the operating system. For data storage, you can add an USB stick instead, and thus more easily port the data between the Pi and your computer.

    1. I don’t need it, it’s just that I have it sitting here doing nothing, and rather than go buy a new card, I wanted to use what I have available.

  18. Hey Wil,

    fdisk and parted won’t resize a partition so you delete and recreate then format. gparted same deal if it can’t resize. I think though that NOOBS will do all the resizing for you so all you need to do is hit it with the recommended SD Formatter tool creating a huge partition unzip the NOOBS distro onto the card and boot…it’s been a very long time since I setup a new Pi using NOOBS but I don’t recall ever needing to deal with partitioning.

    1. Excellent recommendation. This is for those folks who aren’t network admins and don’t want to take the time to learn what all of these:

      “fdisk /dev/whatever
      o [enter] n [enter] p [enter] [enter] +32G [enter] t [enter] c [enter] w [enter]
      mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/whatever1”

      commands actually do. If there is a tool which does the work, let the tool do the work, instead of spending ridiculous amounts of time learning minutiae which will hardly ever be used and likely have to be researched again due to how little they are used. 🙂

  20. I am resigned yet relieved to feel similarly dim on this issue. One day I won’t…particularly if it involves cellphone maintenance. But I digress.

  21. Wow, yeah, thanks for asking; I’ve been working on some similar stuff and this is the most useful pile of links I’ve found in one place so far.

  23. Seriously, just get a bunch of 32GB cards. They Just Work. And fast UHS-1 cards are under $10.

    The hassles with using larger uSD cards on the RasPi just get worse as you try to do more with them.

    If you need more storage, add a USB stick. They Also Just Work. They are also larger and faster.

    I use a USB stick to do live image backups of my boot uSD card whenever anything significant changes (mainly large installs). The command is straightforward:

    $ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt && sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M | gzip /mnt/${HOSTNAME}.$(date +%s).img.gz && sudo umount /mnt

  24. Funny coincidence. I just now sat down on the couch to figure out how to load either Manjaro or Mint on a half-height SD in my macbook with the goal of dual-booting OSX/Linux with each on its own discreet physical hard drive and decided to procrastinate by checking out WWDN. The inspiration to do this came from Jesse Vincent from Keyboardio who runs Linux on his Macbook on a half-height TrendMicro SD card called the JetDrive-Lite_330 that fits nearly flush and can be had for ~$70 for 128m or $150 for 256m and reads ~90MB/s & writes @ about 60MB/s

    FYI: Here’s what I have planned: http://michaelevans.org/blog/2013/01/15/boot-ubuntu-from-an-sd-card-on-your-macbook-air/

    For a bit more, there’s a marginally faster half-height drive that sits totally flush. That alone isn’t worth the extra moolah, but it comes with software to allow OSX to see both the half-height SD and your SSD hard-drive as one physical drive. (requires OS re-install, so YMMV depending on your comfort level with tech) but it effectively allows the upgrade of a Macbook Air SSD without warranty damaging mods. https://www.tardisk.com/

    By the way, here’s one more cool thing that I just discovered. If you have a MagSafe2 power connector on your Macbook and you find it a PITA because it’s always falling out… well, a guy went out and solved that problem. A little shim called a “snuglet” eliminates the slop in the MagSafe2 port so it holds as well as the original MagSafe. I wish I’d have known about this when he first came out with it a year or so ago: http://www.snuglet.com/

    Cheers & a proactively Happy New Year.

  25. So all these wonderful comments are like a foreign language to me, but if you ever want to learn to crochet lace, Wil, I’d be more than willing to teach you!!

  29. Another option is there’s an app called Pi Baker that can help with loading images on SD cards for Pi systems. Recommended for RetroPi and such.

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