how to add files over 4gb to sd card

[TheDude879]

Topic. How do I add files over 4gb to my sd card? is there a way?

 

[Hayato213]

What you adding that is over 4GB?

 

[Kwyjor]

is there a way?

Nope. FAT32 does not support files larger than 4 GB, period.

If you are trying to do something with a 4 GB file, then you are doing something wrong.

 

[anotherthing]

How do I add files over 4gb to my sd card? is there a way?

FAT32 is named that because of it's file allocation since. The original FAT was 16bit, if I remember right, which can only handle files of size 2^16 bytes or 64MB. FAT32 can allocate 2^32 bytes, which is 4GB. That's a hard limit of the file system, so there is no way around it.

I have to ask, what are you trying to put on your SD card that's larger than 4GB? Movies? If it's movies, you can get them smaller by scaling them down since the 3DS display is no where close to HD. The top screen, if I remember correctly, is 400x240 and the lower is 320x240.

 

[TheDude879]

I figured it out. Was having an issue with a .3ds game. Fixed the issue though.

 

[RedColoredStars]

I figured it out. Was having an issue with a .3ds game. Fixed the issue though.

Since there are not any 3DS games over 4GB, why don't you tell us what the problem was and what you did to remedy it?

Edit: Had to have been a custom rom of some sort. I imagine you either installed it over your network, trimmed it, or converted it to cia.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

, if I remember right, which can only handle files of size 2^16 bytes or 64MB.

FAT16 can generally handle ≈2GB files (which is the normal maximum of FAT16 file system anyway when not using 64KB or 128KB clusters like NT4.0 allowed)

Since there are not any 3DS games over 4GB, why don't you tell us what the problem was and what you did to remedy it?

Edit: Had to have been a custom rom of some sort. I imagine you either installed it over your network, trimmed it, or converted it to cia.

There are some 4GB 3DS card games – albeit not full. Trimming the file will always go below 4GB. Maybe the untrimmed file has 4,294,967,296 bytes (4GB) instead of 4,294,967,295 what FAT32 can handle normally. Just guessing…

 

[Hayato213]

Since there are not any 3DS games over 4GB, why don't you tell us what the problem was and what you did to remedy it?

Edit: Had to have been a custom rom of some sort. I imagine you either installed it over your network, trimmed it, or converted it to cia.

Pokemon Ultra Moon and Sun are 4GB in .3ds format.

 

[RedColoredStars]

Pokemon Ultra Moon and Sun are over 4GB in .3ds format.

Thanks for stating what someone else already basically stated. Seems like that's your gig today so far though. That they installed the rom over their network, trimmed it, or converted it to cia still stands regardless of a custom rom or not.

 

[Hayato213]

Thanks for stating what someone else already basically stated. Seems like that's your gig today so far though. That they installed the rom over their network, trimmed it, or converted it to cia still stands regardless of a custom rom or not.

Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon are 4.00 GB (4,294,967,296 bytes) and FAT32 limit is 4,294,967,295 bytes, so there are games that you can't copy and paste into the SD card, I know you can do network install, or trim it or even convert it to a .cia but probably there is a reason why the guy is using a .3ds.

 

[anotherthing]

FAT16 can generally handle ≈2GB files

You're right. I stand corrected.

 

[RedColoredStars]

Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon are 4.00 GB (4,294,967,296 bytes) and FAT32 limit is 4,294,967,295 bytes, so there are games that you can't copy and paste into the SD card, I know you can do network install, or trim it or even convert it to a .cia but probably there is a reason why the guy is using a .3ds.

Why exactly are you pointing out the same points that have already been made by both yourself and another user? That there ARE games that can be over 4GB has already been clarified. Why keep going there? Regarding a possible reason to use 3ds over cia for a game, please elaborate on what possible reason you think that could be. I can't think of any for a game.

 

[Hayato213]

Why exactly are you pointing out the same points that have already been made by both yourself and another user? That there ARE games that can be over 4GB has already been clarified. Why keep going there? Regarding a possible reason to use 3ds over cia for a game, please elaborate on what possible reason you think that could be. I can't think of any for a game.

Well probably because he is a flashcart user like stargate or sky3ds probably.

 

[RedColoredStars]

Well probably because he is a flashcart user like stargate or sky3ds probably.

Then I would have empathy for them. It's 2023, flashcarts are all but worthless for the most part.

 

[ghjfdtg]

FAT32 is named that because of it's file allocation since. The original FAT was 16bit, if I remember right, which can only handle files of size 2^16 bytes or 64MB. FAT32 can allocate 2^32 bytes, which is 4GB. That's a hard limit of the file system, so there is no way around it.

That's not accurate. The reason why files are limited to 4294967296 - 1 bytes is because the file entries in directories encode the size as one 32 bit field and that can only go as high as that. The FAT itself is limited by 32 bit entries divided into clusters. And sectors are almost always 512 bytes which causes the 2 TB limit.

 

[Kwyjor]

FAT16 can generally handle ≈2GB files (which is the normal maximum of FAT16 file system anyway when not using 64KB or 128KB clusters like NT4.0 allowed)

Oh, gee, I thought NT4 only allowed 64 KB clusters, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table suggests it goes all the way up to 256 KB!? (Why in the world would anyone do that!? Especially if no other operating system supported it?)

 

[botik]

remove the last byte from file .3ds. There is a zero byte. The resulting file size is 4GB - 1 byte

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Oh, gee, I thought NT4 only allowed 64 KB clusters, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table suggests it goes all the way up to 256 KB!? (Why in the world would anyone do that!? Especially if no other operating system supported it?)

Off-topic, but interesting (at least for me):

You won't believe it (and I did not know it until trying today): Linux supports these obscure edge cases.
Created increasingly large partitions on a 128GB flash drive and tried to force mkfs.vfat into writing FAT16 (it will of course default to FAT32 for >2GB)
mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n TEST3 -v -S 4096 /dev/sdd1 mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31) /dev/sdd1 has 255 heads and 63 sectors per track, hidden sectors 0x0800; logical sector size is 4096, using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 4194036 sectors; drive number 0x80; filesystem has 2 16-bit FATs and 128 sectors per cluster. FAT size is 128 sectors, and provides 32761 clusters. There are 128 reserved sectors. Root directory contains 16384 slots and uses 128 sectors. Volume ID is 3f012a96, volume label TEST3.


The maximum file size in this scenario is 4GB-1B.

It works normally. Auto mounts on Ubuntu Mate. Writable, readable, large file checksum passed after removing and reinserting the USB drive. Windows 10 on the other hand does not acknowledge the presence of any file system at all (and just pretends the partition is "RAW" offering formatting).

64KB cluster size with normal 512 byte sectors resulting in max 4GB is accepted by Windows 10.