Hacking SDHC on TTDS .. 4Gb + working fine

[BoGG]

Hi guys,

I use a TTDS and have bought a simple SanDisk 4Gb SDHC MicroSD card before, thinking it would be nice to have more space for stuff. Well probably like some of you I realised that the fat32 format of a 4Gb+ was getting a laggy result with the TTDS while going thru the list. In other words you get more space and lots more items on your card, but scrolling and choosing something gets way more laggy which made it not so good.

Well I just fumbled on some infos that let me enjoy lagless use of my SDHC card and thought I would share..

You can use a command prompt (Dos window) to specify a different setting to the Format options, which aren't offered when formatting directly thru Windows.. just do the following action..

4G card format - H:/fs:fat32 /a:32K
8G card format - H:/fs:fat32 /a:64K
--> just change H: to the letter of your card..

Hope it helps someone .. enjoy

--

BoGG

 

[Bri]

The Panasonic formatter is also recommended.

-Bri

 

[bulletmark]

Thanks for the advice as I'm just about to put a 4G SDHC card on a DSTT for a friend.

Actually, I'm a linux user so after reading http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=903612, I think the equivalent command is:

sudo mkdosfs -s 32 -F 32 -I /dev/sdX

Use -s 64 for 8G disk. Change X for your drive appropriately.

Can any other linux users here confirm this command?

 

[Count Duckula]

I had used a couple of different locally purchased 4GB class 4 cards in DSTTs, all fine.

Got a Kingston 4GB class 4 from DX and the menu was laggy as hell. I thought it was fake (it probably is) and was thinking about returning it until I remembered people here mentioning that panasonic format tool.

Tried it and the card now works like it should.


Must say thanks to all the helpful people here, cant remember where I read it but its probably safe to guess it was Bri.

You're a prolifically helpful bloke Bri, nice work.

 

[bulletmark]

Just to follow up here from my post above ...

I received 2 TTDS today + 2 4GB SDHC (class 6) cards. I used the card as factory formatted but the menu speed was poor. I formatted a card on linux as described above and the menu speed improved, but still wasn't great. I then tried the panasonic formatter (see elsewhere on this forum) and the menu speed was better again. Note for linux people, I ran the panasonic formatter under both vmware and virtualbox and it ran fine.

As an aside - I found a couple of roms which would not work. After searching here I found a comment from Bri about the ttds having a problem with any 8 char filename with a space in it. What a bad bug that is and thanks Bri for describing it here. Was thinking I had 2 bad SD cards until I found your post. Note all that this bug occurs in v1.15 and the latest v1.16.

I'm going to use v1.15 even though I paid for and expected genuine ttds cards from dxextreme. I probably have genuine ttds cards but I am not going to risk v1.16. I hope ndstt.com realise how stupid their "fake killer" plan is when genuine buyers like myself are mightly peeved we can't risk the new software. As I have said previously, this is a shortsighted threat by ndstt.com.

 

[aphirst]

You seem to have solved the memory card issue, but I just thought that I'd confirm that command. (I am a Linux user, and I used the same command to stop Castlevania from crashing on my Sandisk 8GB)
The cluster size fix should really be in the first post of a sticky somewhere, to help all the people who have this problem.

 

[Bri]

The Panasonic formatter is still preferred over the Windows "format" command. Although adjusting the cluster size will indeed speed up the microSD card (at the expense of space on the card) the "format" command doesn't format according to the SD specifications and can cause corruption and other problems later on.

-Bri