Formatting SD Cards

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I spent all yesterday trying to get my Garmin satnav to read music on an 8 GByte SD card. 1 GByte cards were recognised but the 8 GByte card was ignored.

Both cards were formatted as FAT and both were readable on the iMAC when installed in the satnav and then the satnav plugged into the computer. Music copied to both cards OK and the music could be played back on the iMAC - but the satnav itself could not see anything on the 8 GByte card.

Garmin help was beaten but found the problem last night. Use Disc Utility to format the 1 GByte card and it shows as a FAT device with a FAT partition. Use the same method on the 8 GByte card and it shows as a Mac OS Extended device with a FAT partition - although I select the device and choose FAT.

To overcome the problem I put the 8 GByte card in my Digital camera, formatted it and then put it in the iMAC to copy the music. Everything worked OK.

Now to the obvious question. How do I make a proper FAT formatted card in the iMAC?
 

chscag

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Now to the obvious question. How do I make a proper FAT formatted card in the iMAC?

When you format the SD card or any other hard drive to FAT-32 using Disk Utility, always be careful to select the MBR option. Do not let Disk Utility format using the GUID scheme as that will place a small 200 MB EFI partition on the card or drive rendering it useless with some devices.
 
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Thanks for the answer but how. I can't see a way of changing the method in disk utility.

If I mount a card which was PC formatted it shows as MBR but as soon as I format on the iMac it changes it to GUID and there seems no way to change it.
 

dtravis7


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Which version of OSX? If it's 10.5 or 10.6 in the Partition menu there is an Option button. There you change it to MBR. Select 1 partition and MS DOS format. That is FAT32. Ignore the file sizes. I just did this to show you were the option button is.

Picture 2.jpg

p1.jpg
 
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Thanks, Found it now. I had been using the erase tab to reformat. Your help is much appreciated
 

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