ExFat Finally Corrupted - Some Questions

[mranonymous]

Hello:

Long time modded Switch owner here. I have been using mine since the SXOS days with exFAT.

Well, as everyone advised, it has finally corrupted. 400GB card filled with games.

Anyway, I just had a few questions:

1. My corrupted 400GB card is a SanDisk and it is legit (tested), so I want to keep it. Am I safe to format it and continue to use it (this time with a clean install with FAT32)? Or should I buy a new one?

2. Could someone point me to a good guide for using FAT32? I am very green to it and understand it cannot accept files over 4GB. Any workarounds etc?

That's about it, thank you

 

[thesjaakspoiler]

1. My corrupted 400GB card is a SanDisk and it is legit (tested), so I want to keep it. Am I safe to format it and continue to use it (this time with a clean install with FAT32)? Or should I buy a new one?

With the Switch, exFAT corruption is usually a software issue.
There are plenty of PC utilities to check an SD card for bad sectors.
Since all is lost already, you might want to run such a program.
With 400GB there might be some bad sectors but if you get hundreds of bad sectors, then it might be better to replace the card.
If you get no bad sectors or just a few, then it should be no problem to keep on using the SD card.

2. Could someone point me to a good guide for using FAT32? I am very green to it and understand it cannot accept files over 4GB. Any workarounds etc?

After formatting the card to FAT32, it's not possible to copy files to it that are larger than 4GB.
The Switch itself does take this into account with the official system and game installs/updates.
Only if you copy files to it yourself, you might run into that 4GB restriction.
So you can't copy over a 16GB copy of Super Smash Homebrew and install it locally or try to watch a 7 hour movie in 8K.
So install homebrew remotely with a PC with something like ns-usbloader or use an homebrew app that handles all this stuff for you.

 

[miniminx]

Only if you copy files to it yourself, you might run into that 4GB restriction.
So you can't copy over a 16GB copy of Super Smash Homebrew and install it locally or try to watch a 7 hour movie in 8K.
So install homebrew remotely with a PC with something like ns-usbloader or use an homebrew app that handles all this stuff for you.

Actually you can use spilt xci and spit nsp games if you need to copy the game to your sdcard that are larger than 4gig before installing, but you are better just doing an USB/HD install or network install for large files as it saves quite a bit of time.

 

[HawaiianInTown]

Doesn't Tinfoil/DBI disregard the 4gb limitation that comes with fat32?

EDIT : My >7gb cart backup of Outer Worlds installed just fine using DBI on my fat32.

 

[Nephiel]

Doesn't Tinfoil/DBI disregard the 4gb limitation that comes with fat32?

EDIT : My >7gb cart backup of Outer Worlds installed just fine using DBI on my fat32.

Because those installers automatically handle splitting of large files when you send them for installing via ns-usbloader/dbibackend, or DBI's built-in FTP or MTP servers. You still can't simply copy/paste to the SD any file larger than 4GB.

 

[miniminx]

Doesn't Tinfoil/DBI disregard the 4gb limitation that comes with fat32?

EDIT : My >7gb cart backup of Outer Worlds installed just fine using DBI on my fat32.

XCI and NSP are kind of similar to zip files in that they contain a bunch of NCA files which are packed inside the nsp and xci. Tinfoil and DBI read the header of the nsp/xci before anything gets installed and this header contains the address location and size of the nca files - these nca files are what gets extracted from the NSP and XCI and it's these file that get installed - not the nsp/xci. These nca files are under 4 gig and that's why you can fit a 7gb game on a fat formatted micro sdcard.

 

[MasterJ360]

Exfat isn't great for homebrew - typically for dumping large files. I had this issue while back using my sxos-switch dumping dlc from my retail game. It frozed up the switch and the SD card wasn't working till I formatted it. Bright side was that I had my Emunand backed up as a copy/pasta file instead of a SD partition which made it super ez to regain everything lost.

 

[remlei]

1. My corrupted 400GB card is a SanDisk and it is legit (tested), so I want to keep it. Am I safe to format it and continue to use it (this time with a clean install with FAT32)? Or should I buy a new one?

you can still use it but just to be sure, boot up to hekate with that 400gb sd card you have inserted to the console and perform a SD card benchmark. if the read test is all around 70MB/sec or higher on 16MB sequential mark and have IOPS score of 2000 points or higher then its still good to use.

Could someone point me to a good guide for using FAT32? I am very green to it and understand it cannot accept files over 4GB. Any workarounds etc?

just follow the usual guide, if im not mistaken hekate will format your SD card for you if you do the partition based emuMMC but if you decide to go with file based emuMMC, with the latest windows 11, you should be able to format any drive with fat32 now a days, just set it to fat32 under the format window and set the allocation size to auto. fortunately enough switch dont really need specific cluster size to make it work on the console (eg 3ds or vita's sd2vita).

 

[miniminx]

Exfat isn't great for homebrew - typically for dumping large files. I had this issue while back using my sxos-switch dumping dlc from my retail game. It frozed up the switch and the SD card wasn't working till I formatted it. Bright side was that I had my Emunand backed up as a copy/pasta file instead of a SD partition which made it super ez to regain everything lost.

Exfat is faster than fat32 and supports larger file sizes, however fat32 makes a backup of the file allocation table and exfat doesn't and it also doesn't support journaling.

There's pro's and cons for each, I find using fat32 formatted with fat32 formatter program is OK for me and is fast enough for my needs, but if you want speed - go for exfat.

Data Integrity Checks, Allocation Table Size​

Despite its advantages, exFAT also has some disadvantages. For example, exFAT does not include advanced data integrity check features like journaling, offered by file systems such as NTFS, ext4, HFS+, and APFS. This may mean that exFAT is more prone to data corruption in case of unexpected outages, data medium disconnection, or system failure.

Another aspect that may be problematic for ordinary users is the allocation table size of exFAT. The allocation table is part of the file system that determines how individual data blocks on storage are assigned to files. exFAT, designed for flash memory and large storage units, tends to use larger allocation units (i.e., data blocks), allowing it to efficiently manage large amounts of data.

When working with a large number of small files, this feature can lead to inefficient use of storage. Each file, regardless of its actual size, must be stored in a full allocation unit. This means that a small file that could theoretically occupy only a small part of the allocation unit will, in fact, occupy the entire allocation unit. This can result in data that fit on a disk with NTFS, HFS+, or ext4 not fitting on a disk of the same capacity formatted as extFAT.

File systems such as NTFS, HFS+, APFS, or ext4 have more flexible and advanced allocation mechanisms that can use storage space more efficiently when working with small files. This is one of the reasons why exFAT may be less suitable for systems where a large number of small files are expected.

 

[4d1xlaan]

These nca files are under 4 gig and that's why you can fit a 7gb game on a fat formatted micro sdcard.

They aren't. the os splits them into 4,294,901,760 bytes parts if they are bigger than 4gb (even if you use exfat, this is for compatibility so you can move sd card data from an exfat card to a fat32 card)