Hacking Question Switch from exFAT to FAT32

AronR

Active Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
Nov 10, 2018
Messages
27
Trophies
0
Age
32
XP
438
Country
United Kingdom
I have a switch on 6.2.0 running SX OS 2.5.2 with a Samsung 128GB exFAT SD XC card.

Everything has been running great for 3 months but recently I seem to have been getting data corruption. Everytime I dump my cart copy of Smash bros, the XCI would corrupt. Also occasionally homebrew apps would corrupt and need to be redownloaded from the switchbru store.

I have read that FAT32 is more stable than exFAT for homebrew and dont mind splitting files for stability. So I formatted my SD card to FAT32 but the switch could not read the boot.dat file to start up. So I formatted the card with my other switch but that converted it back to exFAT.

So my question is... how can I format my SD card to FAT32 and have it work with my switch? Do I need to remove the exFAT update on the OS? If so.. How do I do that?

Thanks for the help!
 

AronR

Active Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
Nov 10, 2018
Messages
27
Trophies
0
Age
32
XP
438
Country
United Kingdom
Copy files from SD to somewhere safe, format your SD to fat32, copy files back. Done. If it does not work, problem is somewhere else.
Perfect thanks! The key thing I was missing was copying over the 'Nintendo' folder to the new fat32 format
 

Kafluke

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 6, 2006
Messages
5,474
Trophies
0
Age
47
XP
4,636
Country
United States
As long as you have the sd card out I'd use a PC to test if it's a fake or not. The fake ones start to corrupt after so much data is copied to them
 
  • Like
Reactions: TinyBilbo

EmulateLife

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 30, 2016
Messages
3,979
Trophies
0
Age
42
XP
1,888
Country
United States
Don't forget to split your files of course

Why? Usb install with aluminumfoil is 100 times easier and you dont have to remove your sd card install game remove sd card again to delete game. Unless the op has sx os in which they can just install via external hard drive. Never a good reason to split files anymore just a waste of time.
 

MyconMama

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Dec 20, 2018
Messages
48
Trophies
0
Age
55
XP
234
Country
United Kingdom
Why? Usb install with aluminumfoil is 100 times easier and you dont have to remove your sd card install game remove sd card again to delete game. Unless the op has sx os in which they can just install via external hard drive. Never a good reason to split files anymore just a waste of time.
That crashes a number of systems-- GoldLeaf+GoldTree seems to be more stable right now.
 

Insane

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
144
Trophies
0
XP
2,348
Country
Germany
Why? Usb install with aluminumfoil is 100 times easier and you dont have to remove your sd card install game remove sd card again to delete game. Unless the op has sx os in which they can just install via external hard drive. Never a good reason to split files anymore just a waste of time.
Because obviously he is using xci loading...
 

aykay55

Professional Idiot
Member
Joined
Apr 14, 2017
Messages
910
Trophies
0
Location
Where the buffalo roam.
XP
1,083
Country
United States
I have a switch on 6.2.0 running SX OS 2.5.2 with a Samsung 128GB exFAT SD XC card.

Everything has been running great for 3 months but recently I seem to have been getting data corruption. Everytime I dump my cart copy of Smash bros, the XCI would corrupt. Also occasionally homebrew apps would corrupt and need to be redownloaded from the switchbru store.

I have read that FAT32 is more stable than exFAT for homebrew and dont mind splitting files for stability. So I formatted my SD card to FAT32 but the switch could not read the boot.dat file to start up. So I formatted the card with my other switch but that converted it back to exFAT.

So my question is... how can I format my SD card to FAT32 and have it work with my switch? Do I need to remove the exFAT update on the OS? If so.. How do I do that?

Thanks for the help!
If I'm not mistaken, FAT32 was created by Microsoft is only for storage devices with 32GB or less, and exFAT is the industry standard and is for anything above.
 

AronR

Active Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
Nov 10, 2018
Messages
27
Trophies
0
Age
32
XP
438
Country
United Kingdom
Thanks for all the input guys! I think installing XCIs from an exFAT USB HDD to my FAT32 SD card would be the way to go, will give it a try tomorrow. Also amazed at how helpful the gbatemp community is :bow:
 
  • Like
Reactions: andyhappypants

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
    straferz @ straferz: Anybody know why this is happening to my ACWW town...