Reformat SD card to NTFS

Question

I want to reformat a 16G SD card to NTFS so that I can use to transfer large files (larger than 4G) from one computer to another easily but my computer will only allow FAT variations. HELP!!

Answer 1

How to format USB drive and memory stick with NTFS

Connect your USB device (i.e. card reader), open the Device Manager, expand Disk Drives. Right click on the USB drive and select Properties and open the Policies tab:

The 'trick' is to change the settings from “Optimize for quick removal” to “Optimize for performance”. Disconnect and reconnect flash drive and now NTFS will be available in the Format dialog.

Or use the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool

Answer 2

Use the CONVERT command line tool:

convert S: /FS:NTFS /X

Where S: is whatever the drive letter that is assigned to your drive. Using this command, you don't even have to reformat the drive!

Answer 3

Alternatively, you can use Winrar to break a large file into smaller pieces, and then store that on the SD card. Right click on the file (you've gotta have Winrar installed first), select "Add to Archive", and in the lower left hand corner of the dialog that pops up there's a field that says "Split to Volumes". Normally, the size of the volumes has to be given in bytes, but you can add "K" or "M" to designate kilobytes or megabytes, respectively. I think "G" will also work (for gigabytes), but I've never tried anything that big.

Answer 4

ExFAT also allows files greater than 4GB. Support for it is built into Vista and Win-7 and is a free download from Microsoft for XP SP2+.

exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table, aka FAT64) is a proprietary file system suited especially for USB flash drives, introduced by Microsoft.

The exFAT file system driver incorporates advanced structures for future scalability. The exFAT file system uses 64 bits to describe file size. This allows for applications that depend on very large files. The exFAT file system also allows for clusters as large as 32 MB, effectively enabling very large storage devices. Specifically, exFAT adds the following features:

• Support for volumes that are larger than 32 GB, the theoretical maximum volume size for FAT32 in Windows XP
  • The theoretical maximum volume size is 64 ZB.
  • The recommended maximum volume size is 512 TB.
• Support for files that are larger than 4 GB, the theoretical maximum file size for FAT32 in Windows XP
  • The theoretical maximum file size is 64 ZB.
  • The recommended maximum file size is 512 TB.