Finally got my new Pi out of the box.
Using the instructions at it tells me to download a formatting tool and then format the SD card.
Now the SD card comes pre-formatted as FAT32 - stuck it in a card reader and checked - so why do I need to format it?
I think I will ignore this bit and just copy the NOOB software on.
We shall see.
Dave R
Nope--you need to follow the instructions.
"That FAT32 formatting is not the formatting you're looking for."
-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II:
Seems to be working though - what are the downsides of just using FAT32?
The NOOB setup seemed to cope O.K. with resizing and stuff.
Anyway, can reformat any time.
I was just wondering what format the SD card tool used.
Cheers
Dave R
On 16 Jun 2013 18:01:06 GMT, "David.WE.Roberts" declaimed the following:
I suspect the preferred format is likely ext3 or similar -- eg; a UNIX/LINUX "native" format.
FAT32 has very little in the way of error recovery; ext3 et al are journaling file systems -- I'm not fully up on them but the concept is that they stage directory (if not all data) changes so that a crash can detect them. If a crash occurs during the writing of the journal copy, the reboot finds the pre-change version. If a crash happens between the journal write and main write a reboot finds the journal copy. And you don't care about a crash after the main write and journal purge as the system is stable.
symlinks and hardlinks may also be a problem in FAT32.
--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
No, it's FAT32.
For the first partition anyway. fdisk -l output:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 122879 57344 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/mmcblk0p2 122880 7744511 3810816 83 Linux
Never used the NOOBs thing - if you can, I'd just install raspbian - get the image, unzip it, and dd it to the SD card.
Gordon
Maybe things have mpoved in since it was published, but the RPi User Guide is more or less agnostic about whatever format the SD card has to start with. It expects you to overwrite the card with a disk image and recommends using dd if your PC is running Linux or OS X and ImageWriter if its running Windows. None of the sets of instructions mentions reformatting the SD card or what it should be formatted as.
From this I'd guess that starting with a FAT-32 formatted SD card is as good as anything.
In any case, a FAT-format SD card that's 4GB or larger will have to be FAT-32 if its a single partition (the norm) because FAT-16 has a 2 or 4 GB partition limit depending on the version of FAT-16 you're using.
You should find that the default Raspbian (Debian Wheezy) disk image leaves you with a FAT format boot partition and an ext3 partition containing the Linux filing system.
-- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
The standard Raspbian disc image will overwrite the partition table (the list of filesystems and formats) so indeed it doesn't matter what's already on the card.
No idea what NOOBS does.
R
The first partition on the SD card *must* be FAT for the Broadcom chip to read the boot files and load a kernel.
You can use whatever format you like for any other partitions provided that whatever OS you're using can read it.
The first partition is for the boot via the graphics processor that has control early in the boot process. It can only handle FAT32 file systems. The kernel image is loaded from this partition. It detects the Linux partition and mounts it as root. From there on /etc/fstab controls the mounts.
Amen. Gives a full blown ubuntu installation. I write this reply on it on a 1680x1024 screen. Give it 8G of really fast SD card if you want to play around, the ubuntu apt depot has a _lot_ of good stuff.
-- mrr
NOT Ubuntu -- It's Raspian Linux.
-- Brian Gregory. (In the UK) ng@bgdsv.co.uk To email me remove the letter vee.
I think you are only likely to need that SD association formatting tool if you want to re-use an SD card that is partitioned strangely (like it will be after writing a Raspberry Pi OS to it). Sometimes the image writing software that runs on Windows can't tell what's going on and won't write a big image to the card when it sees the tiny FAT32 partition.
Also useful if you want to convert such an SD card back into a normal one to use it in your camera or whatever.
-- Brian Gregory. (In the UK) ng@bgdsv.co.uk To email me remove the letter vee.
Raspbian, which is a port of Debian Wheezy.
That sounds eminently sensible.
I guess it would be more helpful if the 'How To' said something like "Check your card in a PC - if it is FAT32 and the full expected size of the card then go to next step."
Cheers
Dave R
Possibly more correct to call it Raspbian Wheezy?
Life is, as always, very confusing but I think that any Debian based port for the Pi tends to get called Raspbian.
[For obvious reasons.]As a long time Ubuntu user I have become very lazy and dependent on GUI based utilities e.g. those fronting 'apt'.
Anyway, a bit of command line never hurt anyone.
So I think that (given the many, varied, and often conflicting answers to this original post) that my point about confusing information is proven.
Cheers
Dave R
P.S. special mention to Brian Gregory who seems unusually sensible for a Usenet poster :-)
I guess it might be that a card that's formatted as FAT32 in a non conformant way (such as a small allocation block size (Windows tends to do this to SD cards if you format with the built in Windows Formatter)) would confuse NOOBS.
-- Brian Gregory. (In the UK) ng@bgdsv.co.uk To email me remove the letter vee.
To add to the confusion, there is a (good) dd for Windows too:
-- Roberto Waltman [ Please reply to the group, return address is invalid ]
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