There's probably nothing wrong with using Acronis.
But if you do start having problems, this will be the first thing that we recommend you to change.
Simply because the Panasonic formatting tool is tested and proven to work well.
If you're not having problems, great, please continue. I don't think I've ever bought an SD that wasn't already formatted in something Windows friendly (eg FAT) and I have often done nothing but start using them as they came and w/o problems and they always work initially.
But, the thing is the SD's didn't really come set up for optimal performance and certain games and flash carts are more sensitive to that, especially if your SD is slow. You may find later that there is a game that you cannot use w/ clean mode on your SD that a simple format w/ Panasonic's formatter will or would have fixed. The program is tiny, fixes problems and eliminates a step in trouble shooting. Seriously, why not just start off w/ it? Your other option is to find out later that you need it and have to go through backing up your SD, using it anyway and reloading all that crap on to the SD...
Not to suggest that this is all that difficult, but the first time you do it, it will probably be the last time you don't use that formatter on your SD's first thing when you get a new one.
QUOTE(nl255 @ Jan 13 2011, 12:29 PM) Windows can't partition flash drives (such as USB thumb drives and SD cards) at all. Ok, so there is a way but you have to install a filter driver to make Windows think the SD card is a removable hard drive. You do not want to know how many "dead" SD cards I was able to resurrect by using Linux's fdisk (even the Panasonic formatter won't help you in that case as it still needs a drive letter, which won't exist without a proper partition table).