Non capable FAT32 SD question.

[JuanMena]

*NOT SEEKING ADVICE OR HELP. JUST ASKING*

Recently (2 weeks ago) my 64GB SD card died on me after The Homebrew Channel got "stuck" at the loading symbol.
Thought it was bad luck, but couple months ago, a 32GB SD card had the same fate.
Both of them got "forced" to be FAT32 with SD Memory Card Formatter.

So of course this can't be just bad luck, so I'm here asking the following:

Has your Wii killed non FAT32 SD cards?
Can it be possible that "forcing" a NTFS/exFAT SD Card to be FAT32 increase the chance of corrupting/killing an SD faster?

Additional info: Both SD cards were ADATA, so maybe the brand sucks? Had them both since 2020.

 

[Plazorn]

I guess Adata isn’t the best brand ever, so that’s a likely possibility. What do you mean by dead though? e. g. It doesn’t read, it loads forever, there are errors. Also, have you tried reformatting it on PC? Rufus would be best for this if you’re on Windows.

 

[JuanMena]

I guess Adata isn’t the best brand ever, so that’s a likely possibility. What do you mean by dead though? e. g. It doesn’t read, it loads forever, there are errors. Also, have you tried reformatting it on PC? Rufus would be best for this if you’re on Windows.

By now both SDs are physically destroyed.

It happened like this:

I made RetroArch borders for SNES core, placed SD in Laptop, transferred files, ejected via Taskbar. Placed SD in my Wii and the typical circle loading symbol appeared and stayed there a good 1 minute. So I took the SD out, put it back again and the circle loading symbol didn't appeared.

Went to Wii Menu and while it detected an SD in, when I opened the SD Channel it said that the object inserted in the SD Slot couldn't be used.

Then I placed it in my laptop and it brought the "This device needs to be formatted" message. I said yes because I had a backup of my files in case something like that happened after my 32GB SD died.

Then, Windows said that "It can't be formatted".

Went to device manager and noticed it didn't even had a letter assigned, so I assigned one, and proceeded to format it via device manager. It did assigned the letter but still wouldn't format it.

Placed my SD in my phone and it wasn't detected.

Tried Rufus and SD Card Manager and neither couldn't complete the formatting phase. Both showed that the 64SD had a total of 0bytes used out of 0bytes.

So... ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

But just wanted to know if ADATA sucks or if it's common for Wiis to kill SDs regardless of brand.

 

[tech3475]

The FAT32 32GB restriction in windows is an artificial limitation, it shouldn't be the cause of any issues by itself.

 

[Mixtape]

Are you only running homebrew content off of your SD card, or are you booting Wii game backups off of it as well? Most homebrew won't do much writing, but routinely letting games autosave to it could theoretically run through the write cycles over the course of a few years.

FAT32 should play no role in that process though. The allocation of data on the physical card is controlled by the card's onboard controller, independent of any formatting.

 

[RAHelllord]

The formatting doesn't matter, it's just how data is stored on the drive and doesn't impact longevity at all.

There are two things you could try, grab the SD Card formatter directly from the SD Foundation and give that a try, and if that fails BOOTICE is a very aggressive flash storage tool that can do a bunch of non-standard operations to try and unfuck some of the deeper information that is used by Windows, and most other tools, to restore defaults.
Specifically in your case you'd want it to try and fix the MBR so that the whole capacity is detected again, and after that the normal tools should be able to format it again.

Considering you lost two cards in the same manner, and with ADATA not being the worst brand out there, I'd suggest downloading your homebrew fresh again as maybe something there corrupted, and maybe check all the cIOS to see if anything is corrupted.

 

[JuanMena]

Are you only running homebrew content off of your SD card, or are you booting Wii game backups off of it as well? Most homebrew won't do much writing, but routinely letting games autosave to it could theoretically run through the write cycles over the course of a few years.

FAT32 should play no role in that process though. The allocation of data on the physical card is controlled by the card's onboard controller, independent of any formatting.

I was running Wii Backups off the 64SD and GCN backups off the 32SD. This, since like 2020 up till couple months ago as
I recently changed ny laptop's HDD for an SSD and the HHD turned into Wii+GCN Backup loader.

The 64SD then turned into my "Retro SD" (RetroArch, N64, PS1 and other homebrew) and the 32SD was going to be used as backup of files.

The formatting doesn't matter, it's just how data is stored on the drive and doesn't impact longevity at all.

There are two things you could try, grab the SD Card formatter directly from the SD Foundation and give that a try, and if that fails BOOTICE is a very aggressive flash storage tool that can do a bunch of non-standard operations to try and unfuck some of the deeper information that is used by Windows, and most other tools, to restore defaults.
Specifically in your case you'd want it to try and fix the MBR so that the whole capacity is detected again, and after that the normal tools should be able to format it again.

Considering you lost two cards in the same manner, and with ADATA not being the worst brand out there, I'd suggest downloading your homebrew fresh again as maybe something there corrupted, and maybe check all the cIOS to see if anything is corrupted.

I physically destroyed the cards couple days ago, but will have your post in mind for the future.

Really? That can be a cIOS issue?
I have them outdated as last time I did something to my Wii was probably 2012 (as far as cIOS goes) and haven't made sny modification to it since because... everything just works.

Before the ADATA SDs I was using 16GB Kingston SDs and both are still working as I'm resorting on one for RetroArch.