Hacking Unable to format SD card with guiformat

[ZeRoX98]

Thanks for the reply. I need a bit more to go on. When I shut down explorer.exe, I just got a completely black screen, can't even see the dekstop where guiformat is located:/

EDIT: I'm on Windows 10 and had to go to the "details" tab to find explorer.exe, couldnt find it under "processes". Don't know if that's simply how it works on Windows 10 or it is because I am unfamiliar with Windows 10 in general. But I don't suppose that would make a difference would it?

Yeah, Windows 10 sorts processes and services in Task Manager much differently than previous versions, but the solution should work the same. I also have Windows 10 at home. I'm not at home at the moment so I won't be able to tell you accurately what you'll see.

Try to run guiformat before ending explorer.exe. It should stay open.

Also make sure to keep task manager open so that you can bring back explorer.exe

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

 

[XaneTenshi]

Yeah, Windows 10 sorts processes and services in Task Manager much differently than previous versions, but the solution should work the same. I also have Windows 10 at home. I'm not at home at the moment so I won't be able to tell you accurately what you'll see.

Try to run guiformat before ending explorer.exe. It should stay open.

Also make sure to keep task manager open so that you can bring back explorer.exe

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

Nice, hadn't thought of that! I'll try and see if I can get it working.

EDIT: Hmm....So trying this didn't work....Until I just decided to hit the format button after the first attempt had failed. It seems to work and the card is now formatted to fat32 now. The activity log did say during the second attempt that it "failed to allow extended DASD on he device" whatever that means...I'll post both logs here, just incase the card is not working when I put it in my Switch.

Thanks for the help for now



EDIT 2: Damn, okay, 1 last thing (hopefully). The SD Card does show that it is now formatted as fat32. But the total amount of space still reads as 59.4GB. Seeing as I chose an allocation size of 32GB, is that not what Windows is supposed to report?

EDIT 3. This just isn't my day....The Card ejects itself while being tested using H2test for Windows. It's just one roadblock after the other

 

[ZeRoX98]

Nice, hadn't thought of that! I'll try and see if I can get it working.

EDIT: Hmm....So trying this didn't work....Until I just decided to hit the format button after the first attempt had failed. It seems to work and the card is now formatted to fat32 now. The activity log did say during the second attempt that it "failed to allow extended DASD on he device" whatever that means...I'll post both logs here, just incase the card is not working when I put it in my Switch.

Thanks for the help for now

View attachment 135086 View attachment 135087

EDIT 2: Damn, okay, 1 last thing (hopefully). The SD Card does show that it is now formatted as fat32. But the total amount of space still reads as 59.4GB. Seeing as I chose an allocation size of 32GB, is that not what Windows is supposed to report?

EDIT 3. This just isn't my day....The Card ejects itself while being tested using H2test for Windows. It's just one roadblock after the other

Glad you were at least able to format it with guiformat. At least that's one step forward.

59.4GB is correct assuming that you have a 64GB SD card. The allocation size unit that you selected is actually 32768 bytes (or 32kb). Allocation size unit (aka cluster size) does not determine how much space you are setting aside to format. That's actually called "partitioning". Allocation Unit size is the minimum amount of space used to store a file. If you're interested in deeper detail on what allocation size, check this article out: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/140365/default-cluster-size-for-ntfs-fat-and-exfat

I found a similar post where they received the same 1005 error using guiformat and they finally determined that they had to replace the card, unfortunately. Here's the link to that: https://www.computerforum.com/threads/microsd-xc-painfully-slow-write-speed.231184/page-3

Maybe you have a defective card or something.

 

[XaneTenshi]

59.4GB is correct assuming that you have a 64GB SD card. The allocation size unit that you selected is actually 32768 bytes (or 32kb). Allocation size unit (aka cluster size) does not determine how much space you are setting aside to format. That's actually called "partitioning". Allocation Unit size is the minimum amount of space used to store a file. If you're interested in deeper detail on what allocation size, check this article out: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/140365/default-cluster-size-for-ntfs-fat-and-exfat

I found a similar post where they received the same 1005 error using guiformat and they finally determined that they had to replace the card, unfortunately. Here's the link to that: https://www.computerforum.com/threads/microsd-xc-painfully-slow-write-speed.231184/page-3

Maybe you have a defective card or something.

Thanks for the help. Yes, the card is a Sandisk Ultra Micro SDXC 64GB. I guess it's now obvious, but I have very little experience doing these kinds of formats, So I wasn't sure what to check for to know if things were working. As for the supposedly defect card I think I lucked out. Seeing as I was having problems doing the format on Windows 10, I decided to try on my Windows 7 PC, for the heck of it. So I did a clean format using Windows format, and then tried guiformat once more. This time, there were no errors or any problems during formatting, so I believe it works.

I'm curious though, after the format, my card now works on my Switch without having to update, but do you know exactly how much space I have on the card, when my assumption that there would be 32GB on it is wrong then?

 

[ZeRoX98]

Thanks for the help. Yes, the card is a Sandisk Ultra Micro SDXC 64GB. I guess it's now obvious, but I have very little experience doing these kinds of formats, So I wasn't sure what to check for to know if things were working. As for the supposedly defect card I think I lucked out. Seeing as I was having problems doing the format on Windows 10, I decided to try on my Windows 7 PC, for the heck of it. So I did a clean format using Windows format, and then tried guiformat once more. This time, there were no errors or any problems during formatting, so I believe it works.

I'm curious though, after the format, my card now works on my Switch without having to update, but do you know exactly how much space I have on the card, when my assumption that there would be 32G on it is wrong then?

The amount of space you should see is 59.4GB (64GB is the size that marketing uses to fool the average consumer and uses a decimal-based system to calculate the capacity). The "32G" that you are referring to is the 32kb allocation sized unit, which is not the amount of space on the card.

 

[XaneTenshi]

The amount of space you should see is 59.4GB (64GB is the size that marketing uses to fool the average consumer). The "32G" that you are referring to is the 32kb allocation sized unit, which is not the amount of space on the card.

Yeah, I know that the Card doesn't actually hold 64GB of storage, and yes, 59.4GB is the amount of space Windows reports is on the card. I'm just a little confused. Switch won't initially work with cards larger than 32GB because it needs the exfat driver. I have bypassed that as the card is now formatted as fat32, but if the 32kb is the allocation size unit and not the amount of space, how the hell do I know how much space is on the card? I saw no partition options for the formats I did. Does this mean I have a fat32 formatted card with 59.4Gb of space?

 

[ZeRoX98]

Yeah, I know that the Card doesn't actually hold 64GB of storage, and yes, 59.4GB is the amount of space Windows reports is on the card. I'm just a little confused. Switch won't initially work with cards larger than 32GB because it needs the exfat driver. I have bypassed that as the card is now formatted as fat32, but if the 32kb is the allocation size unit and not the amount of space, how the hell do I know how much space is on the card? I saw no partition options for the formats I did. Does this mean I have a fat32 formatted card with 59.4Gb of space?

Yes, you have a fat32 formatted card with 59.4GB. If that's what Windows reports, that's the amount of space you should have.

For example, if you have a counterfeit card that was advertised to be a 256GB card and you somehow only have 119GB, then there's obviously something wrong. However, Windows may still report the correct supposed size for the card but when you start filling up the card with data, you may hit a wall midway and won't be able to fit any more data. So, you would use a tool like h2testw to check it's authenticity.

Unfortunately, I don't know the solution or the meaning for the ejecting card issue that you're getting when using h2testw, but you can try to fill up the card with some random files up until 59GB to see if you get any issues along the way.

 

[The3rdknuckles]

For anyone and everyone..... if you look on the backside of your micro SD and it says made in Taiwan.... your card is more than likely fake and that's why it's making things difficult.

 

[XaneTenshi]

Yes, you have a fat32 formatted card with 59.4GB. If that's what Windows reports, that's the amount of space you should have.

For example, if you have a counterfeit card that was advertised to be a 256GB card and you somehow only have 119GB, then there's obviously something wrong. However, Windows may still report the correct supposed size for the card but when you start filling up the card with data, you may hit a wall midway and won't be able to fit any more data. So, you would use a tool like h2testw to check it's authenticity.

Unfortunately, I don't know the solution or the meaning for the ejecting card issue that you're getting when using h2testw, but you can try to fill up the card with some random files up until 59GB to see if you get any issues along the way.

Gotcha. Hopefully, we don't need to worry about the card eject issue. I haven't tested the card with h2testW after the successful format just yet; the card eject thing happened when I tested it after the first format I did, which was the one who gave me some errors during the formatting process.

 

[x64]

I fixed the issue by formatting my 128gb micro sd card from exFAT to NTFS using disk management utility in Windows 10. Then FAT32 format GUI app will format from NTFS to FAT32 without the error that the OP encountered.

 

[Janio_scjr]

Update:
I found the solution to this. Hope this helps people with the same issues.

1. Open guiformat. Leave it open.
2. Open up Task Manager (either with CTRL+ALT+DEL or right clicking on Start Menu bar > Task Manager)
2. Go to processes tab and look for explorer.exe (for Windows 10, it's simply called "Windows Explorer")
3. End explorer.exe (or "Windows Explorer). You will lose your start menu and all currently opened Windows Explorer windows. Keep Task Manager open.
4. Begin the format process with guiformat and you should be able to format without getting that error.
5. In Task Manager, go to File > New Task
6. Type in "explorer.exe", hit OK. It will bring back your start menu. That's it.

Thank you for post the solution.

 

[Elliander]

I always get that error. What to do is to go to This PC > Right-Click on SD card drive L:\ > Format... , normally re-format as exFAT or NTFS so it kills any random processes in it, run that program again then format to FAT32.

I just ran into this error, and this was my solution. I didn't have to kill any processes. I just did a quick format to NTFS which only took a few seconds and then was able to start a full format to FAT32.

 

[FastFeet]

I prefer to Format with AOMEI Partition Assistant. Free version is fine.

 

[ZeRoX98]

I just ran into this error, and this was my solution. I didn't have to kill any processes. I just did a quick format to NTFS which only took a few seconds and then was able to start a full format to FAT32.

Nice! This is probably a better and easier solution. I've updated my original post to include your solution, and I can confirm this worked for me as well.

Thanks!

 

[wad11656]

Thank you so much for this. I had to use fat32 format for my SanDisk 128GB microSD but had to disable explorer.exe from Task Manager to get it to format.

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm

What a mess!

 

[asvardi]

Update:
I found the solution to this. Hope this helps people with the same issues.

1. Open guiformat. Leave it open.
2. Open up Task Manager (either with CTRL+ALT+DEL or right clicking on Start Menu bar > Task Manager)
2. Go to processes tab and look for explorer.exe (for Windows 10, it's simply called "Windows Explorer")
3. End explorer.exe (or "Windows Explorer). You will lose your start menu and all currently opened Windows Explorer windows. Keep Task Manager open.
4. Begin the format process with guiformat and you should be able to format without getting that error.
5. In Task Manager, go to File > New Task
6. Type in "explorer.exe", hit OK. It will bring back your start menu. That's it.

Alternate and quite possibly an easier solution:

This worked perfectly for my 256gb SD, thanks ZeRoX98!

 

[jamespoo]

Thanks man

 

[jlst]

Eillander solution of running first a quick NTFS formatting was excellent for me. I was able to format to FAT32 a 256 GB Samsung MicroSd card.

 

[danman78]

Maybe cleaning the card of any file system would work better as a first step.

1. Open Powershell elevated
2. Type 'diskpart'
3. Type 'lis disk'
4. Type 'sel disk x' where 'x' is the drive # the SD card is (if you have only an SSD in you PC then the SD card will be disk 1)
5. Type 'clean'
6. Exit

 

[Tronalfazz]

Oh my God, thank you for finding out about this and sharing it. I was at a pretty severe loss, and this fix is so much simpler than I was worried about