Hardware Nintendo not sure about Switch HDD support

[Futurdreamz]

It should use exFAT. That's the SDXC standard.

 

[seijinshu]

requires them to have exfat drivers. Knowing Nintendo, they are just going to use Fat32...

 

[Futurdreamz]

Requires them to have FAT32 drivers. Might as well use exFAT

 

[seijinshu]

Requires them to have FAT32 drivers. Might as well use exFAT

they do. It is called the ones they have been using for the past decade.

 

[Spore2]

Every MicroSD card I've ever seen has come with an adapter. And adding a couple mm to the overall thickness could be enough without being even perceptible.

I've been repairing tech gadgets for over ten years and in my experience these card adapters start to fail in a short time. I've also encountered cases wherein poorly made card adapters getting stuck inside the devices and when pulled tend to bend the contact pins inside. If your problem is losing them when swapping, just take extra care. However, swapping sd cards is no longer a common practice. People mostly install these micro sd cards much as storage expansion.

 

[GolfDude]

but we already know that zelda is 10.4 GIGS.. no way they can compress that down to 4

 

[seijinshu]

but we already know that zelda is 10.4 GIGS.. no way they can compress that down to 4

... if they confirmed that, then fat32 won't be happening.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

but we already know that zelda is 10.4 GIGS.. no way they can compress that down to 4

... if they confirmed that, then fat32 won't be happening.

Actually they confirmed it's 13.somethingGB

 

[darkten]

So many assumptions! Fat32 vs exfat - what if it is some completely different thing entirely? For all you know, once the thing is put into a Switch and formatted...it may not be readable on a computer at all due to some filesystem they invented...or the notion that because the size of a *single file* on a msdos-formatted volume...that this is a limiting factor in *any way*?

The constraints of people's imagination/knowledge of possibilities is pretty interesting. None of what has been posted here in any way has anything to do with the "maximum size of a game" at all. Mis-applied knowledge

 

[SonicMC]

... if they confirmed that, then fat32 won't be happening.

It could still be made to work on fat32, on the wii we had game images like smash bros take up over 4GB the four gig limit. When running on a fat32 fs on the wii the image was split into multiple wbfs files. Each under the limit. so a 13 gig game could be split into 4 parts on fat32.

I don't think it much matters as long as the games play

 

[Tigran]

But then why use a FAT32 format instead of just a Wbfs format?

Not being sarcastic.. actual question.

 

[darkten]

256GB cards went down about 30USD or so since they released...

...Yeah...this is actually thing I am most "worried about for Nintendo" if anything - those "bargain" cards are often erm, well, clones, counterfeits or units with "greater than good" defect rates....or really slow (for this use case) and folks scraping for the bargain on say Amazon are gonna put these things in their consoles and "blame Nintendo"...who, would be in a catch-22 if they had some level of quality requirement/insisted on say, minimum spec being SDXC U3/√30...because they would be "forcing" people to buy better cards, etc.

But hey, everything comes on a cart, right, so...I mean...yeah

 

[SonicMC]

But then why use a FAT32 format instead of just a Wbfs format?

Not being sarcastic.. actual question.

WBFS was a file system in itself and then became a file format for wii games. I don't understand all the details. However the wbfs file system it had some issues and sometimes would get corrupted. But the main reason why I switched from wbfs to fat32 on the wii was the ease of moving games. I no longer needed 3rd party tools, I could just use file explorer to drag and drop my games (after I converted them from iso to wbfs files).

 

[Tigran]

Well I mean in this case, why would nintendo resort to Fat32 instead of WBFS format.

 

[SonicMC]

Well I mean in this case, why would nintendo resort to Fat32 instead of WBFS format.

Nintendo would never use WBFS, they didn't make it and was only created by homebrew coders on the wii to run disk games from usb.
Nintendo could use fat32 over exfat because they don't want to pay the microsoft license fee for exfat. Or they could write their own... if they wanted to. I kind of heard the wii u uses it's own proprietary system for formatting and file system. I'm not really sure though.

 

[Tigran]

Okay. Cool. Thanks for the answer.

 

[DarthDub]

Oh, yes, let's use a hard-drive for a proprietary format that can't be read on a pc!

 

[darkten]

But then why use a FAT32 format instead of just a Wbfs format?

Not being sarcastic.. actual question.

It's actually a good question. There is no real reason to believe that the thing would be formatted in a "computer readable way" since because why? For the tiny amount of time it would take to just send things like screenshots wirelessly or whatever, and there isn't like a camera (home console...remember? Maybe they will make a USB camera like everyone else or something, right?) there is no *real need* for this constraint. If it wasn't readable after formatting I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest

 

[Thulinma]

There's a big reason for making it common-computer-readable: on Windows, the default behavior if it doesn't understand the file system is to recommend a format. That's not a good thing.
Making it readable in all computers means that users won't accidentally format their storage, and they will also be able to easily move files to another card (e.g. when upgrading to a larger size, for example) without needing to juggle the files back and forth using the system's limited internal memory.

If they are going fat32 for microsd, they would be limiting games to 4GB... so if that is the case, you wouldn't need anything bigger than 256GB, let alone 128GB.
EDIT:
128GB and 4GB/Game would mean 32 digital games at most
256GB and 4GB/Game would mean 64 digital games at most

That's actually not true. FAT32 only limits the size of a single file to 4GB (also mentioned by darkten, in the quote below).
There's no reason a game could not be split up into multiple files of <= 4GB. In fact, this is what the 3DS already does, if I am not mistaken.

So many assumptions! Fat32 vs exfat - what if it is some completely different thing entirely? For all you know, once the thing is put into a Switch and formatted...it may not be readable on a computer at all due to some filesystem they invented...or the notion that because the size of a *single file* on a msdos-formatted volume...that this is a limiting factor in *any way*?

The constraints of people's imagination/knowledge of possibilities is pretty interesting. None of what has been posted here in any way has anything to do with the "maximum size of a game" at all. Mis-applied knowledge

This. Exactly this. So many options.
Something EXT or BTRFS based would be cool, but of course it'll be something all machines can read (see above), so FAT32 does seem a given, sadly. Not that that is a limitation in any way. (NTFS has issues on Mac, exFAT and FAT32 are similar enough that it doesn't really matter, and Windows can't read anything besides NTFS and FAT-based file systems I believe - but I haven't kept up with them the last few years so I'm not 100% on that last one...).

...Yeah...this is actually thing I am most "worried about for Nintendo" if anything - those "bargain" cards are often erm, well, clones, counterfeits or units with "greater than good" defect rates....or really slow (for this use case) and folks scraping for the bargain on say Amazon are gonna put these things in their consoles and "blame Nintendo"...who, would be in a catch-22 if they had some level of quality requirement/insisted on say, minimum spec being SDXC U3/√30...because they would be "forcing" people to buy better cards, etc.

But hey, everything comes on a cart, right, so...I mean...yeah

Actually, the price reduction I was talking about was for "real" Samsung/Sandisk/Kingston cards, from reputable stores.
Yeah, fake cards is a problem if you order from shady sources - but that is hardly Nintendo's fault I think. Everyone using extendable storage has that problem, not just them.

 

[Futurdreamz]

Nintendo has always used a standard format for SD cards. The Wii U uses a proprietary format, but also allows you to connect two so you can migrate to a new one. You cannot connect two MicroSD cards to a Switch, so it makes sense that it has to be computer readable so you can use a computer to transfer your games to a newer SD card.