Hacking What is the best way to format a Micro SD card in ExFAT?

[tyons]

I first asked this in the "3DS Flashcarts - News, Updates, and Support" thread, and after two days without replies, I decided to open a thread.



to start with a bit of background: my gateway can't read my 32GB micro sd anymore (Kingston SDHC series 10, formatted in exFAT).
I could use it only a few times because I updated to a launcher with multirom only recently since my gateway was faulty. so, I used this micro sd a handful of times, like 7, and only one game session didn't end with an error.
today I was playing and the game glitched, and it told me to reset the console. I did, came back to play but as soon as I started the game it said that the cart had been removed. now the gateway always fails the sd test in the diagnostics. I already tried blowing into the micro sd slot (and on every other part of the cart, lol).
I tried a normal FAT32 micro sd and the test succeeded. I never had problems with playing backups in the past, with the older launchers without multirom. at first, since this 32GB micro sd hasn't been working properly with the gateway from the start, I thought something bad happened when I got my gateway fixed, but now I don't think that's the case.
I tried reformatting the micro sd but now, when I press select to open the multirom menu, it shows only one empty game icon (and obviously the diagnostic test fails), but I put three games in it.
edit: sometimes it shows all the games but when selecting one the title in the upper screen doesn't appear, or two icons are displayed properly and one is empty, etc. It's jammy. I didn't even try opening a game...

I formatted it in this way:

I tried with "SD Formatter v4", but it gave me the error "could not format the memory card".
I started thinking that it may have been a fake card even though I was pretty sure it was original, so I checked with "h2testw v1.4", but it confirmed it has the right capacity.
I tried again formatting it with SD Formatter and this time it succeeded. I used a quick format (the program couldn't use "full erase").
unfortunately the program only formats to FAT32, so I used windows to format it to exFAT (again quick format, allocation units of 32KB).

so here's the main question: what is the best way to format a micro sd card to exFAT to use it with the gateway? what is the recommended size of the allocation units?

thanks to anyone who will help me.

 

[Patxinco]

As far as i know, Windows is able to format to exFAT starting from W7, so you only need to format, without the quick format option enabled.
Then it should work well.

 

[Searinox]

There are no specifics. Back with NDS games, the ROM chip of the carts was as fast or faster than the microSD. With 3DS games, the ROM chip is slower than the microSD, so there's no need to optimize any formatting.

 

[tyons]

and then why does my micro sd not work properly?

I'll try formatting slowly with windows...

 

[piratesephiroth]

use HDD Low Level Format Tool to wipe it

 

[tyons]

ok I made a slow format with windows and it seems ok. the diagnostic test worked at the first try and the games show up fine. I'll post an update if the problems reappear. if they do, I may try that tool that piratesephiroth suggested.

 

[piratesephiroth]

You never need to use a complete format on SD Card.
On flash drives you should always use the 'quick' options, both in HDDLLF and windows format.

 

[tyons]

I always used the quick format and the micro sd never worked well. it seems to work for now.