Hardware Switch Formatting

[godreborn]

should I format my switch's micro sd card to exfat (64KB allocation size)? it's a 1TB card, and I'm a legit user.

 

[DocKlokMan]

should I format my switch's micro sd card to exfat (64KB allocation size)? it's a 1TB card, and I'm a legit user.

Doesn't really matter. The Switch splits large files up into 4GB sections anyway regardless on whether you have FAT32 or exFAT,. ExFAT has a chance to corrupt (as it has no redundant file table like FAT32 does) and has on legit Switch's on Pokémon Sword/Shield no less. Plus, if you happen to use a Mac, exFAT makes copying files onto the SD card a pain in the ass. If you're concerned about performance between the two, keep in mind that Nintendo doesn't use the same exFAT driver that mainstream OS's do, they use a shitty stripped down custom one that does a poor job. I'd honestly just stick with FAT32.

 

[godreborn]

Doesn't really matter. The Switch splits large files up into 4GB sections anyway regardless on whether you have FAT32 or exFAT,. ExFAT has a chance to corrupt (as it has no redundant file table like FAT32 does) and has on legit Switch's on Pokémon Sword/Shield no less. Plus, if you happen to use a Mac, exFAT makes copying files onto the SD card a pain in the ass. If you're concerned about performance between the two, keep in mind that Nintendo doesn't use the same exFAT driver that mainstream OS's do, they use a shitty stripped down custom one that does a poor job. I'd honestly just stick with FAT32.

so allocation size doesn't matter? I was going to try both 32 and 64KBs, cuz I know it matters with the vita and the 3ds with free space and gba games respectively

 

[DocKlokMan]

so allocation size doesn't matter? I was going to try both 32 and 64KBs, cuz I know it matters with the vita and the 3ds with free space and gba games respectively

Since the files are split at specific sizes they align equally well with either 32KB or 64KB allocation. You won't be losing out on any significant storage space either way*. Allocation size has a performance impact on physical media like spinning hard disks, but for solid state memory it's not as significant since fragmentation on physical media is a bigger deal than it is on solid state.

Personally, I'd do 32KB because it will minimize the amount of wasted space taken up by things like screen shots, videos, and any games, updates or DLC smaller than 4GB.

*Math incoming: File split size on Switch is 4,294,901,760 bytes. This divides equally into 32KB at 131,070 clusters. With 64KB allocation it divides equally into 65,535 clusters. You don't have any partial clusters with wasted space. Microsoft reports that a FAT32 partition can contain, at most, 268,435,445 clusters. Assuming a cluster size of 32KB, this suggests that -- at least in theory -- the FAT32 file system is a capable of supporting partition sizes up to 8,796,125,429,760 bytes or 8TB.