Hacking how do you FAT format the SD card?

[sicksam1984]

ive read about this but im not sure exactly what it means, the purpose or how to do it. i got my M3 yesterday and i have been able to save NDS games too it and play them almost perfectly ( star fox comand wouldnt load)

is my SD card already formatted? would there be any advantage in me formating it?

 

[tama_mog]

www.m3wiki.com, look under card compatibility, people have gotten better performance out of ds games by formatting it fat16 with 64k cluster. M3 will support fat16 or fat32 so no matter how your memory came formatted, it will work but may not be the best format.

How to do it, go under control panels, admin tools, computer manager, then use disk management and select format and you can select cluster size as well as fat type.

Next time use the search button to answer these questions that has come up over and over.

 

[Deleted User]

Or put your SD card in your SD card reader/writer then right-click on the drive, choose FORMAT and go from there.

 

[meteora91]

Depends what size.
This is what i've gathered.

If you play gba roms quite a lot.
FAT32 8192kb clusters is for you.

If not, and if you're bothered by the Castlevania intro skipping.
FAT16 64Kb clusters is for you.

Sorry if my units aren't correct.

EDIT: (This is on a Sandisk 1GB card) =P But i think they should work for most cards.
Consult the wiki as posted above.

 

[XeNoGeaR]

64k cluster size for the win!

 

[Vincent Vega]

I think cluster size doesn´t matter as the latest M3 Game Manager has the 8xDMA hidden feature. Writing a DS ROM with 4xDMA, if ROM supports it will write in 8xDMA.

 

[tama_mog]

it does matter, there is a difference the default cluster size vs 64k (or anything larger than default). This can be clearly seen in Castlevania intro tests.

 

[Mucuna]

I got my M3 MiniSD past week (YAY!). The 1st thing I did was update it.

Already flashed the DS and formated my generic 2gb MiniSD using Fat32.

Beautiful.

Everything worked in the first attemp. Every games I wrote in the MiniSD works really nice, no slow downs.

By the way, it is the translucide/dark version of M3 MiniSD.

 

[sicksam1984]

hmm all i can format it too is

FAT
FAT32
NTFS

which should i use? how do i FAT16 it?

 

[crafton48]

FAT is FAT16

 

[lookout]

that right.

 

[Foppzter]

Have anybody tried using FAT12?

 

[sicksam1984]

thanks for the help. got the catlevania movie to work without skipping and all other games seem to work perfectly.

 

[iza]

Fat12 limits your filesize or sumething like that