Formatting SDHC cards for ESP32

Q&A Forum › Category: ESP32 › Formatting SDHC cards for ESP32

Paul asked 5 years ago

Hello, I want to share with all of you an issue with formatting SDHC cards to use with ESP32.

I have a code that uses these cards to record some data. First I used an old 1Mb SD card (formatted in Windows 10, FAT16) and everything worked fine. When I changed the card to an SDHC formatted also with Windows 10 in FAT32/32kb as recommended, the ESP32 could not mount it anymore.

As I was sure the code and the library were good, I spent many hours looking for a way to format the SDHC card in FAT16, which seems like it is not possible.

Finally, I downloaded the CardFormater from the SD Association website, I used it to format the SDHC card (you can not choose any option) and now everything is fine.

Apparently the Windows formatting function does not always work for the ESP32.

Question Tags: ESP32, formatting, SDHC, windows 10

1 Answers

0 Vote Up Vote Down

Sara Santos Staff answered 5 years ago

Hi Paul.

Thank you so much for pointing that out.

I’ll recommend our readers to use the CardFormater software from now on.

I’ve use the Windows formatting function many times and it always worked well, but in case I have any issues, now I know a workaround.

Thank you again.

Regards,
Sara