Speed up a 4GB SD in you Axim

[lushmd]

I prefer win2k.

From XP, open a console (Start|Run...|"cmd")
Use "/fs:fat" to format your 4GB card in FAT16.
See the attached image:

Thanks for the info :approve:

[Daniel2006]

What did you try?

Formatted it under XP command windows, SK Tools, and PocketMech... It default it to 4k when I used 64k... (or failure on XP command line windows.) It's a Transcend 150x 4gig card. The 8 gig CF card can be formated with 64k just fine.

Thanks!

Daniel,

[bub181]

I prefer win2k.

From XP, open a console (Start|Run...|"cmd")
Use "/fs:fat" to format your 4GB card in FAT16.
See the attached image:

thanks for the info!

i just got a transcend 4GB 150X sd card and i formatted it to fat16 in windows xp using this method. it seems to work well with my axim X51v

[Flowageboy]

True. XP won't let you do it in GUI.

This thread is confusing...does this mean if you run XP, you cannot format a 4GB SD card to Fat16?

I did my SD4GB on FAT16 for a time, but find out that it is absurdly impractical for program files (every file starts at 64Kb). I went back to FAT32 ;).

[Flowageboy]

my card reader on my HP pavillion Laptop won't read my new 4GB Transcend SD Card, but my Axim has no problems....guess I can't format to fat16

do I have to install a driver for the drive to read that card? It has no problems reading my xD picture cards

[Flowageboy]

solved it by reading this http://news.softpedia.com/news/Getti...ds-40379.shtml
and installing a new TI driver which worked and now my laptop will read a 4GB SD Card. Ran the command function and now have my card formatted to FAT16

[Pseudo Nim]

Sorry to add more confusion, but when people are talking about 4GB SD cards and formatting them to 64k clusters - are you using SDHC or non-SDHC cards? From what I understand, the x51v does NOT support SDHC, so just wanted to confirm that you cannot take a SDHC card, format it to FAT16 w/64kb clusters and have it work.

[L.P.]

Sorry to add more confusion, but when people are talking about 4GB SD cards and formatting them to 64k clusters - are you using SDHC or non-SDHC cards? From what I understand, the x51v does NOT support SDHC, so just wanted to confirm that you cannot take a SDHC card, format it to FAT16 w/64kb clusters and have it work.

SD not SDHC. SDHC do not work in the Axim.

i can confirm it!
Fat32 SD card is NOT compatible with Axim x50v.
i have a PQI 2GB 133x sd card, with fat32 it takes 4 hours to transfer 1.3GB of iguidance 4.0 data to x50v. and it takes a long time to calculate a routes!

after i format the SD card with fat16, it only takes 1 hour to transfer 1.3GB map data to x50v! also it runs and calculate routes much quicker!

[aarona17]

This works great thks!

[jackleung]

There is my perosnal experience on x51v

I have HiSpeed 2G SD from Ultra with 188 songs & video on it. I found CorePlayer was very choppy when I load all of them. At first I thought it's Core player fault. Then I found they are playing ok on my CF. A research on Axim SD speed bring me to this thread and I format my SD w/ 64k Fat 16 (if you don't like to play w/ Dos command, you can use Disk management (under Control panel > Admin tools > computer managerment) to format yr disk w/ different cluster size)). And it works and play smoothly now!!!

So funny Rom update by SD only support Fat32 but it works much better for fat16

[Half Decaf]

For anyone who cares, Vista's Windows Explorer will format a 4GB SD card in FAT using the 64K cluster size. I personally don't use it due to the inherent storage inefficiency. I use my SD card for programs, not data. If I used it for data, which tend to be relatively large compared to PDA program files, I would most certainly go the FAT route.

[wizcode]

I would not recommend using 64K clusters. The FATGen document that describes the FAT file system layout explicitly discourages against doing so:

Values that cause a cluster size greater than 32K bytes do not work properly; do not try to define one. There is a misconception that values greater than this are OK. Some versions of some systems allow 64K bytes per cluster value. Many application setup programs will not work correctly on such a FAT volume.

The best way to speed up your storage card is to choose a file system format with less overhead (like FAT32/4K or FAT32/8K), increase the file system cache and keep the storage card defragmented. All the above can be accomplished with Pocket Mechanic Professional - the product has a free 30-day trial version.

[G35]

I have a FAT32-formatted 1GB SD Card that has some programs on it, including iGuidance. It seems slow to respond to inputs so I think I'll try reformatting my SD card to FAT16 to see how it performs.

Can I just copy all the files from my SD Card onto my PC, reformat the SD, and re-copy the files back onto the SD card? Does that work or is it more complicated than that?