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[Diablo]

Firstly, you cannot use a CF card that has been formatted by another device, such as a digital camera, with the SuperCard.  It may work at first, but it will eventually stop working, and may corrupt your ROMs or saves.

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...........::HOW TO FORMAT YOUR CF CARD FOR USE WITH YOUR SUPERCARD::..........
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If your CF card has been previously formatted:

• Copy the contents of the card, if any, to a location on your hard drive if you wish to save them.
  
• Proceed to "FORMATTING UNDER WINDOWS".
  

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FORMATTING UNDER WINDOWS:

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- Method 1:
   

• Right-click "My Computer" on your desktop and select "Explore".
  - If you do not have a "My Computer" icon on your desktop, right-click the "start" button on the taskbar and select "Explore".
  
• Browse to the drive letter of your CF reader/card.
  
• Right-click the drive name in the Explorer window, and select "Format".
  
• Set the "File System" to "FAT", and the "Allocation unit size" to default.
  
• Make sure nothing else is selected or altered, and click the "Start" button.
  

- Method 2:

• If you have administrative access, right-click "My Computer" on your desktop and select "Explore".
  - If you do not have a "My Computer" icon on your desktop, right-click the "start" button on the taskbar and select "Explore".
  
• Browse to the "Control Panel" in the Explorer window and double-click it.
  
• Double-click "Administrative Tools" under the "Control Panel".
  - If you are running Windows XP and do not see "Administrative Tools", click the "File" menu, and select "Control Panel -> Open".  Then click "Switch to Classic View" in the left frame.
  
• Double-click "Computer Management".
  
• In the "Computer Managemen" window, click "Disk Management" under the "Storage" heading.
  
• Find your CF card/reader in the list, right-click the drive, and select "Format".
  
• Clear the "Volume Label", set the "File System" to FAT, and set the "Allocation unit size" to "Default".
  
• Make sure no checkboxes are selected, and click the "OK" button.
  

- Method 3:

• Click the "start" button on the taskbar, then select "Run...".
  
• Type "command", without the quotations.
  
• In the Command Prompt, type "FORMAT drive letter of CF /FS:FAT", without the quotations,  and press ENTER.
  - Replace "drive letter of CF" with the drive letter associated with your CF card/reader.
  - Sample, using Z as the drive letter of the CF card/reader: FORMAT Z: /FS:FAT
  
• Make sure your CF is in the reader, then press ENTER again.
  
• When prompted for a volume label, type nothing, and press ENTER
  
• After the card is formatted, type "exit", without quotations, and press ENTER.
  

- Method 4:
Use a software that can format your CF card.  Refer to the software manual for instructions on how to format the card in FAT format.


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Updates:
4/2/05 - Added how to exit the command prompt

[Gernikarra]

If just buy a Super Card SD and I wanted to use my digital camera to put archibes on the SD card. And ... I can´t? (Please explain me!

[socket]

I really do not understand what you are asking.  Check the reply to your other post to see if that helps.

[socket]

OH,  I SEE...

Firstly, you cannot use a CF card that has been formatted by another device, such as a digital camera, with the SuperCard. It may work at first, but it will eventually stop working, and may corrupt your ROMs or saves.

I'm not sure how true this is... Anyone care to confirm or deny this?  The only way I could even get my card formatted to be readable by the SC was to use a digital camera...

[superbo3]

so can you plug the card into your supercard and plug it in your pc and format that way or do you have to format it using some other device? (same aplys to sd cards right?)

[scootdog]

so can you plug the card into your supercard and plug it in your pc and format that way or do you have to format it using some other device? (same aplys to sd cards right?)

You do not plug the supercard into your pc.  You need a reader/writer for either the SD or CF card.  The SD or CF card plugs into the reader/writer and it connects to a usb port.  The reader/writers run around $5.

[NT]

OH,  I SEE...

Firstly, you cannot use a CF card that has been formatted by another device, such as a digital camera, with the SuperCard. It may work at first, but it will eventually stop working, and may corrupt your ROMs or saves.

I'm not sure how true this is... Anyone care to confirm or deny this?  The only way I could even get my card formatted to be readable by the SC was to use a digital camera...

A long time ago a lot of users had trouble with using CF cards that were formatted by digital cameras with the SC.  In the end it's best to just use Windows to format them so everyone does it exactly the same way and there's no possibility of some other device causing unknown problems.

[socket]

oh ok... i was just in the predicament that 2 different CF readers could not format the card under windows.   I formatted it with a camera then again with windows.  still working fine.  

you do realize that i posted that in september, right?  thanks though, i was actually curious about that.

[NT]

oh ok... i was just in the predicament that 2 different CF readers could not format the card under windows.   I formatted it with a camera then again with windows.  still working fine.  

you do realize that i posted that in september, right?  thanks though, i was actually curious about that.

Better late than never.

[WarMachine]

i bought a 8gig cf card for my ds a long time ago.. for about 150 bux.. still have not been able to format it

supposivly fat 16 only allows up to 1 or 2 gig partitions.. i forget which, but, 8 gig is too much, obviously...

the only tut i found, as a way around this, was to boot in dos, and format it with some wierd hp utility, that would partition the card... which seemed like it was going to work, accept, for some odd reason, my computer wont boot up completley if my usb flash card reader is hooked up to it.. and i dont wanna go buy an internal one and try to get it to work with my pc just for the sake of this problem

there any other way to partition a cf card?

[dai_uk]

Why not try downloading ubuntu and booting it as a live CD - I'm sure you can partition the device on linux

[NT]

i bought a 8gig cf card for my ds a long time ago.. for about 150 bux.. still have not been able to format it

supposivly fat 16 only allows up to 1 or 2 gig partitions.. i forget which, but, 8 gig is too much, obviously...

the only tut i found, as a way around this, was to boot in dos, and format it with some wierd hp utility, that would partition the card... which seemed like it was going to work, accept, for some odd reason, my computer wont boot up completley if my usb flash card reader is hooked up to it.. and i dont wanna go buy an internal one and try to get it to work with my pc just for the sake of this problem

there any other way to partition a cf card?

I think 4GB is the most you're gonna get the Supercard to read.  So make a 4GB partition on the CF card and leave the rest of the space unpartitioned.  Then use the special format command in this thread and see if it works.

[WarMachine]

^^that thread is for a sd card... tried it anyways.. didnt work. that was without partitioning though, becuz like i said, as of now, i dont have the option to. im gunna keep researching and see if i can find a way to partition other than the previously stated

[NT]

^^that thread is for a sd card... tried it anyways.. didnt work. that was without partitioning though, becuz like i said, as of now, i dont have the option to. im gunna keep researching and see if i can find a way to partition other than the previously stated

Have you tried XP's built-in disk management panel?

[Sonny_Jim]

Formatting an SD Card under Linux (CF should be the same).
DOING THIS WILL DESTROY ALL DATA ON YOUR CARD!!!

Plug the device in and type dmesg to get the device name (should be something like /dev/sdb)  You'll also need to get root priviledges.  

MAKE SURE YOU GET THE RIGHT DEVICE!  IF YOU NUKE YOUR DRIVE IT'S NOT MY FAULT.  I WILL USE /dev/sdb as an example

I like to clean the mbr first using:

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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1k count=512

Then create a partition on the card using fdisk (or cfdisk)

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cfdisk /dev/sdb

The label and type doesn't really matter.  Just set it up to have a primary partition.  Now you need to format that partition

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mkfs.vfat -f 16 /dev/sdb1

And now you should be good to go.