Hacking Allocation unit size?

[Herobroski]

I got a gateway and im on the first step. I have to format my microSD card. When I format it, I clicked on exFAT. It automatically placed me at 32kb for allocation unit size. Should I leave it there or which other size should I use?

 

[Gamemaster1379]

Larger cluster sizes are usually used on hard drives to improve seek time, but are more inefficient for storing data. Flash memory has extensively faster search times, so seek times are already fairly negligible. You are best off using the smallest default allocation unit size because search times don't matter, so you may as well store things as efficiently as possible and not waste data.

 

[Herobroski]

After I placed the microSD card in the blue card and placed it in the 3ds and after I pressed the labyrinth atlus, I got a "SD/TF Card ERROR". Uh oh, what does this mean?

 

[Ryft]

I just always select "Default". Should be at the top of the list. Worked for me with Gateway.

 

[badbob001]

After I placed the microSD card in the blue card and placed it in the 3ds and after I pressed the labyrinth atlus, I got a "SD/TF Card ERROR". Uh oh, what does this mean?

Only the red card supports exfat. For the blue card, stick with fat or fat32.

 

[Herobroski]

HOLY SH*T. Badbob001, after reading that comment, I may have made tremendous misunderstandings and mistakes.
Are you saying I need 2 microSD cards (one for blue and one for red)? Could I simply use one microsd card and switch them between blue and red?

 

[Gamemaster1379]

HOLY SH*T. Badbob001, after reading that comment, I may have made tremendous misunderstandings and mistakes.
Are you saying I need 2 microSD cards (one for blue and one for red)? Could I simply use one microsd card and switch them between blue and red?

Technically speaking, you could get away with using one MicroSDHC card.

Here's how this works. You have two flash carts, the blue and the red. The blue is used to put the 3DS into DS mode and install an exploit. Once the exploit is installed, you launch the exploit through the 3DS's system settings (and do not need the blue flash cart to launch it). However, you will need the blue flash cart again to reinstall the exploit if you ever launch the system back into DS mode at any point. This includes playing DS games or launching GBA/DS titles via VC. However, if you avoid putting the system back into DS mode, you will not need the blue cart to be functional again.

So, assuming you do the above and only need to use the blue cart once, then yes, you could get away with 1 SD card. First format the SD card in FAT32 and put the necessary installer on it for the exploit. Once the exploit is installed, take the card out, reformat it into exFAT with a small allocation size, put your ROMs on it, then put it in the red cart.

However, if you intend to use the blue cart, play DS cartridges, or make use of the VC of GBA/DS games, then you will need two MicroSD cards in order to maintain re-installation of the exploit.

 

[Herobroski]

Thank you. Very well explained.

 

[gamesquest1]

Pretty sure you can just format as fat32 and use it for both cards with no formatting and reformatting etc.
Just put the blue card files on AND the 3ds roms, this should work fine and then you can switch the micro SD between the red and blue card..........I really do suggest you just get 2 micro SD cards though

 

[IronClouds]

Pretty sure you can just format as fat32 and use it for both cards with no formatting and reformatting etc.

This is true folks, FAT32 will still work with the red card. Have you run into any issues in 3DS mode that are confirmed to be due to the file system on a FAT32-formatted micro SD card, though?

 

[badbob001]

Having a larger cluster size should speed up reads from the card. If your clusters are too large, then you will waste space if your data is smaller than the cluster size, but this is not a problem at all with all rom files being large files. It does help that the much smaller .sav files are written to a separate card. With card2 card saves being written back to the .3ds file itself, I wonder if larger clusters will help limit fragmentation.

On my DS, I would format a 4GB card as FAT16 using 64K clusters, which speeds up access. On my 3DS, I'm using 64K clusters on my 32GB card. I wonder if/when we'll get a 3ds card speed tester app. On the DS, I would simply run Portrait of Ruin to make sure the opening animation is smooth.

 

[badbob001]

I really do suggest you just get 2 micro SD cards though

The blue card can be very small. I'm sure many of us can find an old phone with a 128MB or smaller microsd card to use.

 

[IronClouds]

The blue card can be very small. I'm sure many of us can find an old phone with a 128MB or smaller microsd card to use.

Some of us actually use the blue card for DS games and simple emulators, though.