Error formatting 64Gb USB

LandyVlad

I'm using a 64Gb Sandisk USB3 stick, and attempting to format it FAT32 on my Windows computer.

I read this: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/

and followed the instructions here: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/format-large-hard-drive-fat-fat32/

and it took ages but resulted in this -

[code]
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> format /fs:fat32 g:
Insert new disk for drive G:
and press ENTER when ready...
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Verifying 57.8 GB
The volume is too big for FAT32.
Format failed.
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32>
[/code]

Any ideas of what else I could try please?

Does exFAT work with the Pi / retropie ?

jonnykesh

@landyvlad Windows is a pain the the ass. Use a third party tool like this https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/pls/index.html or this https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/best-fat32-format-tool.html

LandyVlad

Thanks I'll give those a try.

Yes Windows is a pane in the butt ( see what I did there… )

I actually do have a Linux computer, if thats a better choice, however I would want to be adding future ROMs to the USB from my Windows computer...

chewsavedlatin

The way you format it doesn't matter to how you load ROM's.

If you want to load ROM's from windows, i find the easiest way is once you've set up retropie. Set your ROM's folder to a samba share, then if its connected to your network you can just put the IP address of the retropie in windows explorer and drag and drop the files in.

danielmewhouse

@landyvlad because of this kind of issue I prefer Linux over Windows, but whatever...

Did you tried HP format tool? Every time I get in trouble formatting a disk on Windows, this baby does the work just like a breeze 😄

jonnykesh

@landyvlad Using Linux? You should have said. Use:

sudo mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sd*

replacing the asterisk at the end to correspond with your drive position on the dev tree.
Use lsblk to find it.

danielmewhouse

@jonnykesh on Linux I prefer use Gparted. Because of the graphical interface, it's easy to use.

jonnykesh

@danielmewhouse Yeah, gparted is a handy tool. I really would only use the command line if necessary. I had a 64GB thumb drive the other day that gparted just would not recognise to allow me to format it. The command line tool worked a treat in that case. For everything else I would use gparted also.
I also have a live bootable gparted USB I use to manage partition sizes on my dual boot laptop which is incredibly useful. (The Windows partition just keeps getting smaller and smaller... I don't even need to open windows anymore as I have the windows partition mounted in Debian. The last time I opened it by mistake the damn thing spent half an hour updating!)

LandyVlad

@jonnykesh said in Error formatting 64Gb USB:

@landyvlad Windows is a pain the the ass. Use a third party tool like this https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/pls/index.html or this https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/best-fat32-format-tool.html

The former didn't give me any options and formatted the usb stick (which it said was an sd card) as ex-FAT rather than FAT32.

The second easeus worked fine and quickly. Cheers