Windows 10: How Can I Format an SD Card with FAT16 using Win10?

I need to format a 2G SD card in FAT16.

Can I do that?

It is a card for an old Canon A520 which only takes 2G cards and the only cards I can find don't work with it: gives 'memory card error'.

These are not HD cards so they should work. I suspect the problem is they are formatted FAT32.

Found suggestions I use that free 'partition wizard' software so I went for it but my Avira refused to accept it. Found something bad in it.

p.s. I just tried the partition manager and formatted the card as 'FAT' in there. Using the default block size.

Hoping that might do it. But it didn't. I still get 'memory card error' on the camera.

But I did see in partition manager that there's a 12G unused partition on the card !

Looks to me like the vendor is selling 16G cards somehow fixed up so's they appear as 2G cards - perhaps they're faulty 16G cards? And perhaps this is the cause of the camera error.

Anyway, if I can know for certain I've formatted FAT16 that'll eliminate that aspect. Did I already do it or there's a way?



:)

 

Win 10, Format to FAT16 not FAT16 (LBA)


It just dawned on me that our voting machines use the PCMCIA card. I haven't been able to get in touch with the IT person for the county that maintains them so don't have any particulars as to the OS or the card's formatting. How large are the cards? FAT/FAT16 has limits.
Maybe some help:
Format PCMCIA card with FAT16 format for MICB upgrade - Nortel: CS1000 (Meridian) systems - Tek-Tips
software to format pcmcia as fat16 at DuckDuckGo
Just for kicks I plugged in a 256MB Thumb drive and found that File Explorer chose FAT for formatting it, other options were FAT32, NTFS and exFAT. FAT16 is pretty much limited to 2GB partition size. The use of LBA/Logical Block Addressing was generally by the BIOS in setting up HDDs.
File Allocation Table - Wikipedia
Logical block addressing - Wikipedia

EDIT: Just found a 2GB Thumb drive in my parts box and checked, Win10 File Explorer shows it will indeed format 2GB as FAT [FAT16]. Bottom line: looks like using a Linux machine would work if wanting FAT16 over 2GB. I just checked the drive on my Linux Mint 17 and it has GPARTED installed [by default] and it can format 2GB as FAT16 so the main thing is how large the capacity of the PCMCIA card is.

 

Win 10, Format to FAT16 not FAT16 (LBA)

Hi

The card is on 64 MB.

As your link to "File Allocation Table - Wikipedia" are there different types of the: FAT16 the one we need is 0x06

 

Unable to format sd card

Hi,

There are many possible reasons why this issue is happening. To help resolve your concern, we'd like to ask the following questions below:

• Are you using an SD card reader? If yes, have you tried using another card reader?
  
• Have you tried formatting the SD card using another computer?
  

In the meantime, we suggest running a hardware diagnostics while your SD card is connected to the computer and see if it helps. Follow the steps below:

• Open Control Panel.
  
• Type Troubleshooting in the search box, then select
  Troubleshooting from the search result.
  
• Click Hardware and Sound.
  
• Select Hardware and Devices to run a hardware diagnostics.

We'll keep an eye out for your response.