Hacking Homebrew Switch stock firmware won't read Sandisk 512 GB SD card formatted in FAT32 (using fat32format with 32K clusters) but will read exFAT.

[superkrups20056]

Hello,

I bought a new Sandisk U1 512 GB SDXC microSD card to replace my 128 GB microSD card. I have games that I have bought on my stock firmware 13.2.1. I have them backed up using Checkpoint. My dream is to dual boot emuNAND (file based) and stock sysNAND using my new SD card formatted in FAT32. I am aware of how to do this.

The issue is that my old SD card was formatted in exFAT, and I am finding that my stock firmware will not read my new card formatted in FAT32 (only exFAT). I have tried multiple approaches, including partitioning with hekate. Formatting the microSD card with the stock firmware under "formatting options" yields an exFAT partition, even if the original partition was FAT32.

I have another switch on firmware 9.0 that is able to read a 400 GB SanDisk SDXC formatted to FAT32 on stock firmware. Why isn't the above switch able to read my 512 GB SDXC card in FAT32 on 13.2.1?

 

[thesjaakspoiler]

Some versions of windows seem to mess up cards that are the 512GB and making them unreadable.
The suggestion is to format them on Linux :
https://superuser.com/questions/1650262/is-it-possible-to-format-a-512gb-mirco-sd-card-as-fat32

 

[Draxzelex]

Hello,

I bought a new Sandisk U1 512 GB SDXC microSD card to replace my 128 GB microSD card. I have games that I have bought on my stock firmware 13.2.1. I have them backed up using Checkpoint. My dream is to dual boot emuNAND (file based) and stock sysNAND using my new SD card formatted in FAT32. I am aware of how to do this.

The issue is that my old SD card was formatted in exFAT, and I am finding that my stock firmware will not read my new card formatted in FAT32 (only exFAT). I have tried multiple approaches, including partitioning with hekate. Formatting the microSD card with the stock firmware under "formatting options" yields an exFAT partition, even if the original partition was FAT32.

I have another switch on firmware 9.0 that is able to read a 400 GB SanDisk SDXC formatted to FAT32 on stock firmware. Why isn't the above switch able to read my 512 GB SDXC card in FAT32 on 13.2.1?

Have you tried using GUIFormat?

 

[pic1972]

You can format the 512GB sd card in FAT32 with RUFUS. Maybe your switch with firmware 13.2.1 has drivers only for exFAT. Updating the firmware with daybreak you should be able to install FAT32+exFAT drivers....

 

[Dimensional]

Any SD Card with a capacity greater than 32 GBs will only have official support for exFAT. While you can try to format it to FAT32, due to limitations in the partition type, this can lead to massive sector sizes on large capacity drives, which can make it unstable or unusable on various devices with easy FS corruption, or for devices that depend heavily on SD cards, crashes and FS corruptions.

There's the chance that because the Switch only officially support using exFAT on SDs with more than 32 GBs of storage, there isn't any way around it except for shrinking the partition and adding a new one. I don't have a hacked Switch, so I can't determine how it detects and if it will force a formatting.

To make sure I'm following, are you trying to format the entire SD as a single FAT32 partition, or give it multiple partitions?

 

[binkinator]

e: found an article and video of the actual guy that made 32G the arbitrary limit in Windows Format.exe owning up to his short sightedness in creating it.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/04/windows_format_fat32/

in the video…he recommends using Rufus to get around his mistake. He also reveals that even in Windows you can get around the limit by using the command line.

Rufus and GUIFormat allows you to break Microsoft’s arbitrary recommendation to use larger partition sizes with smaller cluster sizes. Linux doesn’t have this artificial limitation either. Microsoft only did this to provide middle of the road performance to fit the average needs of the vast majority of users. They didn’t want “Microsoft Windows” to perform poorly (in this case waste disk space) should somebody chose a fringe format. The spec for SD cards readily accepts much larger partitions (up to 2TB) using FAT32.

Cluster Count * Cluster Size = Partition Size

	FAT16	FAT32	NTFS	exFAT
Max Cluster Size	32K (64K WinNT)	32K	64K (4K Compression)	32 MByte
Max Cluster Count	65526	268,435,445 (4,177,920 16Bit)	4,294,967,296	?
Max Partition Size	2GB (4GB WinNT)	8TB (Actual 2TB, 127GB 16Bit)	64 TB (Basic - 2TB)	64 ZB (Best 512 TB)
Min Partition Size	360 KByte (FAT12)	512 MByte	10 MBytes	?
Max File Size	2GB (4GB WinNT)	4GB	16EB (Basic - 2TB)	64 ZB (Bes

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 268,436,445-by-32 -by-1024 bytes or 8.8 terabytes. However, in practice, Windows XP Professional limits the size of FAT32 partitions to 32GB and reports a "Volume size too big" error if you attempt to format a FAT32 partition larger than this.

This is just an arbitrary limitation imposed by a Microsoft dev because he couldn‘t envision a use case for that much space at the time and thought it would be replaced in the event it ever happened.

The spec for SD cards limits the actual Max to 2TB.

SD Cards Capacity Types
The SD Card Formatter formats the following SD Card capacity types.
- SD up to 2GB
- SDHC more than 2GB up to 32GB
- SDXC more than 32GB up to 2TB

I can’t wait until they start making 2TB SD cards and I’m certain Rufus and SD Card Formatter will be able to format them using FAT32 for use in the Switch.

Bottom Line: download Rufus or GUIFormat select FAT32, select 32K block size and you will be well within published SD card and FAT32 specs and it will run great on your Switch using built in FAT32 drivers instead of the buggy exfat drivers they so lazily selected by Ninty.

 

[superkrups20056]

Just wanted to let y’all know I figured this out. I formatted the SD card with Switch first (exFAT) which put a small partition before the main partition for whatever reason. Then I formatted the SD card again with FAT32GUI, which left this small partition at the beginning intact. Now the Switch reads it no problem. I recommend formatting your SD card with the Switch first rather than FAT32GUI straight out of the box.

 

[binkinator]

Just wanted to let y’all know I figured this out. I formatted SD card with switch first (exFAT) which put a small partition before the main partition for whatever reason. Then I formatted the SD card again with FAT32GUI, which leaves this small partition at the beginning intact. Now the switch reads it no problem. I recommend formatting your SD card with the switch first rather that FAT32GUI straight out of the box.

I do the exact same thing. Let the switch layout the pattern and then come back and tidy things up. I honestly don’t even allow the firmware with the exfat drivers on my switch Just in case I forget.

 

[superkrups20056]

I do the exact same thing. Let the switch layout the pattern and then come back and tidy things up. I honestly don’t even allow the firmware with the exfat drivers on my switch Just in case I forget.

Will the switch format the SD in FAT32 or exFAT if your firmware doesn't have the exFAT drivers?

 

[binkinator]

Will the switch format the SD in FAT32 or exFAT if your firmware doesn't have the exFAT drivers?

Hekate is a bootloader so it’s up before the OS. It does the formatting before the Switch firmware even sees it. I’ll test it just the same.

e: I dropped HATS on an SDCardand I formatted with Rufus.

I formatted it with the Hekate partition manager like so:
1) rest of drive
2) 29G Emunand
3) 8G L4T
4) 8G Android

45G total on a 128G card. and my largest partition is a 0x0C (FAT32.)



I copied my 11.0.0 Sysnand Firmware to a new emunand. Updated to 14.1.1 (FAT32 only…no exfat) and am about to format with Hekate again just to make sure.



You can see that even though I have 69GB on my HOS partition Hecate is showing it is going to format FAT32.



…even with the full 119G partition selected, Hekate is still showing FAT32.



back in business on FAT32 courtesy Hekate.

Honestly…I haven’t thought about this in like a really long time so I was kinda curious what would happen in this experiment. Would I find out I had been using exfat all along? Would format fine but not boot? I wouldn’t have bet anything significant on it either way. This was a fun experiment to prove out. I think I’m gonna go touch some grass now.

 

[urherenow]

Hekate is a bootloader so it’s up before the OS. It does the formatting before the Switch firmware even sees it. I’ll test it just the same.

This test was severely flawed. The test is to install the Nintendo firmware without the exFAT driver, and then try to format your >32GB partition in HOS. IIRC, The Switch will not do it. It will ask you for an update, then it will format it to exFAT.

I think...

Anyway, hekate will NEVER format a partition as exFAT.

 

[binkinator]

This test was severely flawed. The test is to install the Nintendo firmware without the exFAT driver, and then try to format your >32GB partition in HOS. IIRC, The Switch will not do it. It will ask you for an update, then it will format it to exFAT.

I think...

Anyway, hekate will NEVER format a partition as exFAT.

I see what you’re getting at. my point was to let Hekate do the formatting. I will try it with just HOS w/o the exFAT driver…for science.

 

[urherenow]

I see what you’re getting at. my point was to let Hekate do the formatting. I will try it with just HOS w/o the exFAT driver…for science.

lol. Make sure the partition is >32GB. That's where HOS supposedly yells at you about updating to exFAT.