Format memory cards

[TopDog]

Hi All.

I have an 1GB SD memorycard. After an serious crash on my Pocket PC, all my music has disapeared, but the space has not been realocated.

I don't want to retreive the old data, but reformat the memory card.

Now to the question:

I'm using this mem-card mainly for Mp3, and a few games, and only in my PPC, not camera's etc... Shold I go for FAT16 or FAT32?

And what Cluster Size?

[Menneisyys]

I'm using this mem-card mainly for Mp3, and a few games, and only in my PPC, not camera's etc... Shold I go for FAT16 or FAT32?

In general, it can't really be told which one to go without testing them both. You may want to check the particular card in your particular PDA for transfer and file creation speed, with both file systems, if you really want to choose the better-performing one.

Use Resco File Explorer or Total Commander for testing file transfer speeds (both reading and writing) between the main memory and the card. File creation speed can be checked with copying tons of small files to the card. You may want to use, for example, the Java program at http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36376 to create such test files. I wouldn't use any synthetic benchmarks (Spb Benchmark, Pocket Mechanic etc) for this because they like to deliver totally incomprehensible and unreal data sometimes, especially if there're other installed programs on the PDA.

[Don't Panic!]

FAT32 works for me.

[Menneisyys]

In general, it can't really be told which one to go without testing them both. You may want to check the particular card in your particular PDA for transfer and file creation speed, with both file systems, if you really want to choose the better-performing one.

Use Resco File Explorer or Total Commander for testing file transfer speeds (both reading and writing) between the main memory and the card. File creation speed can be checked with copying tons of small files to the card. You may want to use, for example, the Java program at http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36376 to create such test files. I wouldn't use any synthetic benchmarks (Spb Benchmark, Pocket Mechanic etc) for this because they like to deliver totally incomprehensible and unreal data sometimes, especially if there're other installed programs on the PDA.

Both file systems will work, I've only written the above because I thought the original question asked about which one is faster/has better performance.