SanDisk formatting

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I did a search for how to format a 8gb SanDisk on my MacBook Air laptop, and couldn't find out how to format it,I finally hired it done. I am going to buy another one, 32gb. Can anyone tell me how format it here. I would call Apple iCare, but I'm not good at taking notes. Thanks, Ronnie, Palestine, Texas
 
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Raz0rEdge

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You would use Disk Utility to do the work. You can search for it with Spotlight (CMD+space) or go to Applications->Utilities to find it within Finder. You don't specifically mention if this is an SD card or USB drive, but it doesn't matter, as long as it is inserted, Disk Utility (DU) will show it on the left sidebar along with your hard drive which is likely titled Macintosh HD.

Make sure you DO NOT touch the Macintosh HD entry while doing any of the further DU work, otherwise you might end up causing yourself a lot of grief.

With the Sandisk disk/drive inserted, select it from the left sidebar and it will likely have nothing on the right. Now click on the Partition tab and choose 1 partition and format it as ExFAT and you're all set. You can give it a name that makes sense to you. Once you've finished thing, exit DU and now you will see a new icon on your Desktop and Finder sidebar with the name you chose for your drive. You can now copy files to/from it.

If any of this is confusing, please clarify things before doing anything.
 
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Unless there was more to the question than appears, why format Fat 32 over Mac OS Extended (Journaled) please, Ashwin? Formatting Fat32 requires different partition map, Master Boot Record, for external drives. OS X uses GUID.
 

Raz0rEdge

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It's usually best to stick with ExFAT for external drives so that you can use it with Windows machines in a pinch or some other devices. I'd suggest going Mac OS extended only if you are absolutely 100% certain that an external drive will never be connected to anything other than Macs.
 
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Thanks for the reply, I'm glad I asked before this site closes in the near future. I hope I can find anothe site like this on. In fact I had wished I had found this site years ago. I did a copy and paste, and put it in my Pages app.
 
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I don't have a external drive, I have a SD cart slot on my MacBook Air, just didn't no how to format. Thanks ever so much for your help.
 
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IWT


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And as a follow-up to the advice given by Ashwin and the question raised by Harry -

In general, External Hard Drives, will be connected to and associated with the Mac. So should be formatted OS X Extended (Journaled).

On the other hand, USB sticks, with smaller capacity and being less robust, are used for temporary storage and frequently for transferring data from a Mac to a PC and vice versa. So formatting as ExFat makes more sense - and allows for unlimited file sizes. MS-DOS/FAT has a 4GB transfer limit.

So everybody is right and everybody is happy;)

Ian
 
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MS-DOS/FAT has a 4GB transfer limit.
Small clarification: That format has a FILE SIZE limit of 4Gb. You can transfer more, but only in 4Gb chunks. So a 32GB card, formatted that way, could hold 8 4GB files, theoretically.
 

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I don't have a external drive, I have a SD cart slot on my MacBook Air, just didn't no how to format. Thanks ever so much for your help.

I had assumed you were talking about an SD card, the instructions are the same as what I've outlined above. As far as partition type goes, I would strongly recommend ExFat so that you can use this SD card in your MBA, your camera, TV or anything else that has an SD card slot without any issue.
 

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