XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

In a recent thread on using Windows to format brand new Android sdcards,
it turned out formatting to exFAT with the same volume label worked well:

*Using Windows to make Android smoother*
<https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=82342&group=alt.comp.os.windows-10#82342>
<https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg>
<https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg> What sdcard brand do you buy?
<https://i.postimg.cc/fWX7wzcg/filesys.jpg> Recommend format to 0000-0001
<https://i.postimg.cc/xTHbYfZ5/populate-sd.jpg> Resulting in seamless swap
<https://i.postimg.cc/dt3BBT9K/externalsdcard.jpg> Android garbage

The knowledge learned in that astoundingly seamless swap of a three-year
old 64GB sdcard to a brand new 128GB card begat a garbage-directory query:
*Why is Android creating (garbage?) external sdcard directories?*
<https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=55349&group=comp.mobile.android#55349>

Where I need to now understand more about how you recommend Windows format.

Since Amazon Vine keeps shipping me hundreds of dollars of 'free stuff'
every day, I decided to use the extra two sdcards in some of the solar
panel Wi-Fi security cameras that I have piling up outside my doorstep.
<https://amazon.com/vine>

None of the dozen or so security cameras Amazon shipped me seem to accept
an exFat-formatted sdcard - they're all stuck on the old FAT32 format.

Hence the question... *Q: How do "you" format to FAT32 on Windows?*

Here's what I did (after googling to see what the answer might be):
*How to Format exFAT to FAT32: A Step-by-Step Guide*
<https://www.grdian.com/resources/how-to-format-exfat-to-fat32-a-step-by-step-guide>

That recommends using the GUI version of the Windows Fat32Format command:
<http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm>
Where the canonical site for the FAT32 GUI Format seems to be in the UK:
<http://ridgecrop.co.uk/fat32format.htm>
With instructions for how to format to FAT 32 using the GUI over here:
<http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm>

OK. I did that. I noticed one oddity which was the FAT32 volume label
wouldn't take dashes (whereas all my sdcards are formatted to "0000-0001").
<https://i.postimg.cc/nz7XqWpC/fat32.jpg>

I do that to enable me to know already the full path to anywhere on the
sdcard (as otherwise it would be something like "/storage/F3CD-A9B7"),
and to enable "It just Works!" smooth sdcard portability between phones.

So, unfortunately, the FAT32 volume label turned out to be "00000001",
which means I probably shouldn't have bothered - I should likely have made
it something like "CAMERA" so that it's portable among all cameras.

Having not touched FAT32 for, oh, I don't know how long, decades perhaps, I would like to ask 2 fundamental questions when dealing with security cams.

1. What program on Windows do you use to format camera sdcards to FAT32?
2. Since new sdcards have dashes by default, why does FAT32 not allow them?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

On Fri, 11/1/2024 11:01 AM, Andrews wrote:

In a recent thread on using Windows to format brand new Android sdcards,
it turned out formatting to exFAT with the same volume label worked well:

*Using Windows to make Android smoother* <https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=82342&group=alt.comp.os.windows-10#82342>
<https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg> <https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg> What sdcard brand do you buy? <https://i.postimg.cc/fWX7wzcg/filesys.jpg> Recommend format to 0000-0001 <https://i.postimg.cc/xTHbYfZ5/populate-sd.jpg> Resulting in seamless swap <https://i.postimg.cc/dt3BBT9K/externalsdcard.jpg> Android garbage
The knowledge learned in that astoundingly seamless swap of a three-year
old 64GB sdcard to a brand new 128GB card begat a garbage-directory query: *Why is Android creating (garbage?) external sdcard directories?* <https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=55349&group=comp.mobile.android#55349>

Where I need to now understand more about how you recommend Windows format.

Since Amazon Vine keeps shipping me hundreds of dollars of 'free stuff'
every day, I decided to use the extra two sdcards in some of the solar
panel Wi-Fi security cameras that I have piling up outside my doorstep. <https://amazon.com/vine>

None of the dozen or so security cameras Amazon shipped me seem to accept
an exFat-formatted sdcard - they're all stuck on the old FAT32 format.

Hence the question... *Q: How do "you" format to FAT32 on Windows?*

Here's what I did (after googling to see what the answer might be):
*How to Format exFAT to FAT32: A Step-by-Step Guide* <https://www.grdian.com/resources/how-to-format-exfat-to-fat32-a-step-by-step-guide>

That recommends using the GUI version of the Windows Fat32Format command: <http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm>
Where the canonical site for the FAT32 GUI Format seems to be in the UK: <http://ridgecrop.co.uk/fat32format.htm>
With instructions for how to format to FAT 32 using the GUI over here: <http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm>

OK. I did that. I noticed one oddity which was the FAT32 volume label wouldn't take dashes (whereas all my sdcards are formatted to "0000-0001"). <https://i.postimg.cc/nz7XqWpC/fat32.jpg>

I do that to enable me to know already the full path to anywhere on the sdcard (as otherwise it would be something like "/storage/F3CD-A9B7"), and to enable "It just Works!" smooth sdcard portability between phones.

So, unfortunately, the FAT32 volume label turned out to be "00000001",
which means I probably shouldn't have bothered - I should likely have made
it something like "CAMERA" so that it's portable among all cameras.

Having not touched FAT32 for, oh, I don't know how long, decades perhaps, I would like to ask 2 fundamental questions when dealing with security cams.

1. What program on Windows do you use to format camera sdcards to FAT32?
2. Since new sdcards have dashes by default, why does FAT32 not allow them?

Windows 11 has the 32GB volume size limit removed.

This ONLY works from the command line ("format". Disk Management still has the old limit.
And then, there is the issue of WHICH VERSION of Windows 11 has this change.
It could be 24H2. Which a person could get via an Upgrade Install, if they
were in a rush to get that OS version.

# User succeeding on large device, on Windows Insider 11 version...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GVCoA-DWYAAzCSy?format=jpg&name=small

Otherwise, you would use fat32format from RidgeCrop Consultants.
I have done 2TB disks with this, purely to test that it works :-)
Who can resist a bar bet.

Name: fat32format.exe
Size: 49218 bytes (48 KiB)
SHA256: D5320A127374AF23139730F0D01AEE8195E5FE15B63C35D48D80930ABBF7F5CB

You can format an entire 2TB hard drive as FAT32. The cluster
size will be big, but... so what. It's unlikely, for a 12Meg camera
or a 50Meg camera, that a picture will be housed in a single cluster.
It's going to take multiple clusters, so the efficiency issue
isn't all that bad. If you were storing 2KB text files, then the
efficiency of the cluster size would be more of an issue.

Even ExFAT isn't exactly going to have zero overhead. Check
your cluster size on it and see.

The 4GB max size of file on FAT32, means handling problems.
You could use any ZIP application, in segmented mode and Store mode,
to chop a file into byte sized chunks, with no translation overhead.
You could take a 7GB Hollywood movie, and after ZIP Store was finished,
it would become a 4GB and a 3GB file (no total size change), and the max
size is passed as an argument to ZIP to chop it into a particular size.
People have various opinions on what is a "safe" size for chopping.
Using 1GB chunks is conservative and safe, and stays well away from
the 4GB minus one byte limitation of FAT32.

Notice that the RidgeCrop utility, doesn't have a volume name param.
Normally you don't interact with the cluster size, either. It makes
it "big enough for the job". A small disk gets a small cluster. A 2TB
disk gets a max sized cluster (the cluster limit).

fat32format.exe /?

Usage Fat32Format X:
Erase all data on disk X:, format it for FAT32
It is also possible to specify a cluster size for the disk, e.g
Fat32Format -c1 X: - use 1 sector per cluster ( max size 137GB for 512 bytes per sect)
Fat32Format -c2 X: - use 2 sectors per cluster ( max size 274GB for 512 bytes per sect )
Fat32Format -c4 X: - use 4 sectors per cluster ( max size 549GB ... ) Fat32Format -c8 X: - use 8 sectors per cluster ( max size 1TB ... ) Fat32Format -c16 X: - use 16 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c32 X: - use 32 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c64 X: - use 64 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c128 X: - use 128 sectors per cluster (64K clusters)
Version 1.07, see http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/fat32format.htm
This software is covered by the GPL
Use with care - Ridgecrop are not liable for data lost using this tool

*******

As a general principle, for camera devices you let the camera itself
format the media. The assumption is, the camera is well designed enough,
to make a format the camera itself can read :-) There have been
occasional reports of "I formatted my SD in my OS, and plugged it into
my new camera, and the camera won't write it". The mistake in that
case, is you were supposed to look up in the camera manual, which
OSD menu item has the format function in it. My camera only uses up to
32GB media, so the cluster size never goes to max. The hardware standard
on the SD interface, is wrong for the largest media available today.
Modern cameras take bigger media than my old camera.

A smartphone is unlikely to have exactly the same sort of issues
that digital cameras have had in the past. The DCIM is a "virtual" one in
a sense, and there are fewer digital-camera-like issues there.

Cameras can be bastards. I picked up a really old digital camera
off the table, and noticed the time clock on it was wrong. I
attempted to set the clock. I hit the "save" button, the camera
died instantly, never started again after that. Black screen.
This is my Picard FacePalm face. If I'd only known this was
a possible outcome, I would have left the damn time setting alone :-)
There isn't a milligram of tech info about that camera on the
web, so I have no where to start on figuring out whether it's
possible to fix it (for nostalgia reasons).

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

On 11/01/2024 11:01 AM, Andrews wrote:

In a recent thread on using Windows to format brand new Android sdcards,
it turned out formatting to exFAT with the same volume label worked well:

*Using Windows to make Android smoother* <https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php? id=82342&group=alt.comp.os.windows-10#82342> <https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg> <https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg> What sdcard brand do you buy? <https://i.postimg.cc/fWX7wzcg/filesys.jpg> Recommend format to 0000-0001 <https://i.postimg.cc/xTHbYfZ5/populate-sd.jpg> Resulting in seamless swap <https://i.postimg.cc/dt3BBT9K/externalsdcard.jpg> Android garbage
The knowledge learned in that astoundingly seamless swap of a three-year
old 64GB sdcard to a brand new 128GB card begat a garbage-directory query: *Why is Android creating (garbage?) external sdcard directories?* <https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php? id=55349&group=comp.mobile.android#55349>

Where I need to now understand more about how you recommend Windows format.

Since Amazon Vine keeps shipping me hundreds of dollars of 'free stuff'
every day, I decided to use the extra two sdcards in some of the solar
panel Wi-Fi security cameras that I have piling up outside my doorstep. <https://amazon.com/vine>

None of the dozen or so security cameras Amazon shipped me seem to accept
an exFat-formatted sdcard - they're all stuck on the old FAT32 format.

Hence the question... *Q: How do "you" format to FAT32 on Windows?*

Here's what I did (after googling to see what the answer might be):
*How to Format exFAT to FAT32: A Step-by-Step Guide* <https://www.grdian.com/resources/how-to-format-exfat-to-fat32-a-step- by-step-guide>

That recommends using the GUI version of the Windows Fat32Format command: <http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm>
Where the canonical site for the FAT32 GUI Format seems to be in the UK: <http://ridgecrop.co.uk/fat32format.htm>
With instructions for how to format to FAT 32 using the GUI over here: <http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm>

OK. I did that. I noticed one oddity which was the FAT32 volume label wouldn't take dashes (whereas all my sdcards are formatted to "0000-0001"). <https://i.postimg.cc/nz7XqWpC/fat32.jpg>

I do that to enable me to know already the full path to anywhere on the sdcard (as otherwise it would be something like "/storage/F3CD-A9B7"),
and to enable "It just Works!" smooth sdcard portability between phones.

So, unfortunately, the FAT32 volume label turned out to be "00000001",
which means I probably shouldn't have bothered - I should likely have made
it something like "CAMERA" so that it's portable among all cameras.

Having not touched FAT32 for, oh, I don't know how long, decades perhaps, I would like to ask 2 fundamental questions when dealing with security cams.

1. What program on Windows do you use to format camera sdcards to FAT32?
2. Since new sdcards have dashes by default, why does FAT32 not allow them?

I do not have a security camera, but have had several digital cameras
and a couple of trail cameras. While the cards can be read in Windows,
and you can write to them; all of the vendors recommend that you let the
camera format the card, rather that do it in a computer.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, rec.photo.digital

Paul wrote on Fri, 1 Nov 2024 13:10:47 -0400 :

Having not touched FAT32 for, oh, I don't know how long, decades perhaps, I >> would like to ask 2 fundamental questions when dealing with security cams. >>
1. What program on Windows do you use to format camera sdcards to FAT32?
2. Since new sdcards have dashes by default, why does FAT32 not allow them?

Windows 11 has the 32GB volume size limit removed.

I must apologize that I had re-used the newsgroup line which accidentally
left c.m.a in it - which knocked Windows 11 out - so I've swapped them.

I posted already an apology on the Android newsgroup for my faux pas, where
I asked c.m.a not to respond given this is a Windows (& Camera) question.

I removed the generic a.d.m.w in favor of r.p.d which is more appropriate
to ask questions of how to format all the 'free' cameras I get from Amazon
Vine (since I have about a dozen of them waiting to be tested by me).

This ONLY works from the command line ("format". Disk Management still has the old limit.
And then, there is the issue of WHICH VERSION of Windows 11 has this change. It could be 24H2. Which a person could get via an Upgrade Install, if they were in a rush to get that OS version.

# User succeeding on large device, on Windows Insider 11 version...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GVCoA-DWYAAzCSy?format=jpg&name=small

This is good to know. Thanks Paul. You're always helpful and knowledgeable.

I had run the search for Windows 10, which didn't mention what you said.
<https://www.grdian.com/resources/how-to-format-exfat-to-fat32-a-step-by-step-guide>

It's often that many Windows guides on the net don't know what you know!

Otherwise, you would use fat32format from RidgeCrop Consultants.

That's what I ended up doing, but I haven't used FAT formatting in
(seemingly) many years, so I was unsure of why I had to download a
third-party tool just to do something basic such as formatting.

Thanks for letting us learn from you as to what the best command is.

I have done 2TB disks with this, purely to test that it works :-)
Who can resist a bar bet.

Name: fat32format.exe
Size: 49218 bytes (48 KiB)
SHA256: D5320A127374AF23139730F0D01AEE8195E5FE15B63C35D48D80930ABBF7F5CB

I wasn't aware of the command-line command.

I think I had used the RidgeCrop GUI for that same command, I guess.
<http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm>
Name: guiformat.exe
Size: 77824 bytes (76 KiB)
SHA256: 647FB4F5108AF632C3D52FEC34934922C50C70585697504E92FB80B3B7D05EE3

You can format an entire 2TB hard drive as FAT32. The cluster
size will be big, but... so what. It's unlikely, for a 12Meg camera
or a 50Meg camera, that a picture will be housed in a single cluster.

I left the cluster size at 32K by default for the camera card fat32 format.
But I did wonder what I should have set it to.

I didn't know the criteria to use to decide what cluster size cameras like. These 'free' Amazon Vine security cameras are mostly advertised as HD & 2K.

It's going to take multiple clusters, so the efficiency issue
isn't all that bad. If you were storing 2KB text files, then the
efficiency of the cluster size would be more of an issue.

I get it. Thanks for the digital photo sdcard formatting advice.

Is this the right algorithm for the FAT32 format of camera cards?
a. Find the largest size of a single file
b. Make the cluster at least that size

But what about the HD video size that these free cameras can save?

Most are 30 seconds. Some are five minutes. Others are continuous.
Depends on the security camera (I have a dozen to test right now).

What is the suggested cluster size for when videos are involved?

Even ExFAT isn't exactly going to have zero overhead. '
Check your cluster size on it and see.

Is that the same as the sdcard ExFAT "Allocation Unit Size" of 128KB?
<https://i.postimg.cc/fWX7wzcg/filesys.jpg>

The 4GB max size of file on FAT32, means handling problems.
You could use any ZIP application, in segmented mode and Store mode,
to chop a file into byte sized chunks, with no translation overhead.
You could take a 7GB Hollywood movie, and after ZIP Store was finished,
it would become a 4GB and a 3GB file (no total size change), and the max
size is passed as an argument to ZIP to chop it into a particular size. People have various opinions on what is a "safe" size for chopping.
Using 1GB chunks is conservative and safe, and stays well away from
the 4GB minus one byte limitation of FAT32.

All these 'free' security cameras that I'm supposed to review for Amazon
Vine seem to want to direct me to the cloud - so they all appear to work without the sdcard - but Amazon Vine gave me all the free 128GB sdcards I
would want - so that's why how to format them to fit the camera is asked.
<https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg>

You may note that each camera seems to be able to independently format the 128GB sd cards but if you know me, I want all the cards to "look" the same
to all the cameras so that I can swap them out at will and the camera will
see the same volume label so the camera won't know I swapped out the card.

I plan ahead - but I don't have the knowledge that you have nor that which
the folks on r.p.d have in knowing about sdcard format efficiency tricks.

Notice that the RidgeCrop utility, doesn't have a volume name param.

Hmm. The RidgeCrop fat32 format GUI does have it, doesn't it?
<https://i.postimg.cc/nz7XqWpC/fat32.jpg>

I had wanted to keep the volume label for the camera sdcard the same as teh volume label for the Android sdcard (0000-0001) but the RidgeCrop fat32
format GUI enforced the lack of dashes (so it ended up as "00000001").
<https://i.postimg.cc/TYXW19Vt/fat32guiformatvolumelabel.jpg>

Note: The only reason I wanted the dash is to keep the volume label the
same on all my sdcards so that they're completely portable across devices.

But the FAT32 GUI wouldn't allow a dash. Why not?

Normally you don't interact with the cluster size, either. It makes
it "big enough for the job". A small disk gets a small cluster. A 2TB
disk gets a max sized cluster (the cluster limit).

fat32format.exe /?

Usage Fat32Format X:
Erase all data on disk X:, format it for FAT32
It is also possible to specify a cluster size for the disk, e.g
Fat32Format -c1 X: - use 1 sector per cluster ( max size 137GB for 512 bytes per sect)
Fat32Format -c2 X: - use 2 sectors per cluster ( max size 274GB for 512 bytes per sect )
Fat32Format -c4 X: - use 4 sectors per cluster ( max size 549GB ... ) Fat32Format -c8 X: - use 8 sectors per cluster ( max size 1TB ... ) Fat32Format -c16 X: - use 16 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c32 X: - use 32 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c64 X: - use 64 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c128 X: - use 128 sectors per cluster (64K clusters)
Version 1.07, see http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/fat32format.htm
This software is covered by the GPL
Use with care - Ridgecrop are not liable for data lost using this tool

This is good to know as I have a dozen free sdcards to format in a dozen correspondingly 'free' cameras to test out for Amazon Vine (later on, when
I'm Gold, I can get an unlimited amount of 'free stuff' in terms of cost).

Then I'll be testing the desktop PCs & laptops that Vine allows for Gold
Vine reviewers (Silver Vine is limited to only $300 'free stuff' per day).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Vine>

As a general principle, for camera devices you let the camera itself
format the media. The assumption is, the camera is well designed enough,
to make a format the camera itself can read :-) There have been
occasional reports of "I formatted my SD in my OS, and plugged it into
my new camera, and the camera won't write it". The mistake in that
case, is you were supposed to look up in the camera manual, which
OSD menu item has the format function in it. My camera only uses up to
32GB media, so the cluster size never goes to max. The hardware standard
on the SD interface, is wrong for the largest media available today.
Modern cameras take bigger media than my old camera.

This is good advice to let the camera do the formatting but the only
problem I have is I want to be able to swap sdcards between cameras.

Do you think having the same volume label in all sdcards helps make that
swap smoother (just as it does for swapping Android sdcards about does)?

A smartphone is unlikely to have exactly the same sort of issues
that digital cameras have had in the past. The DCIM is a "virtual" one in
a sense, and there are fewer digital-camera-like issues there.

My free Samsung Galaxy A32-5G has had the sd card swapped out twice before since I broke two while under warranty & T-Mobile replaced them for free.

When I swapped out the 64GB sdcard (with DCIM & Pictures stored on it) from
the old (broken) phone to the new phone, everything worked smoothly.

Even all my apps came over easily as did my exact homescreen (all without
using the Internet - it was all copied over Wi-Fi on my home LAN alone).

That's of course due to the fact that I've set up my phone sdcard three
years ago waiting for the phone to be broken - but this swap was different.

This swap was to put a new 128GB sdcard into the old phone (which had the
64GB sd card for three years on three phones) which I wanted to be smooth.

Since the volume label on the new 128GG sdcard was formatted on Windows to
the same volume label of the old 64GB sdcard, the transition was smooth.

Android didn't even notice the difference.

Not the webdav servers. Not the camera apps. Not the screenshot editors.
Not even the routing apps (such as OSMAnd~ which store data on sdcards).

It was smooth. It just worked.

I credit that to you telling me, many years ago, that I could format the
volume label (which I had called the "name" of the card in those days).

You (and a few others) taught me everything I know about efficiency.
Thanks!

I always read every word you post - and I even love your joking style.

Cameras can be bastards. I picked up a really old digital camera
off the table, and noticed the time clock on it was wrong. I
attempted to set the clock. I hit the "save" button, the camera
died instantly, never started again after that. Black screen.
This is my Picard FacePalm face. If I'd only known this was
a possible outcome, I would have left the damn time setting alone :-)
There isn't a milligram of tech info about that camera on the
web, so I have no where to start on figuring out whether it's
possible to fix it (for nostalgia reasons).

I agree that every camera is a bastard in its own right, as I've been
reviewing these free surveillance cameras for a week now, as I was
reviewing other free stuff prior (like solar lights & camping gear).

A problem with these surveillance cameras is many use *different* software
to run them (maybe I should have left c.m.a on the newsgroup list).

That software all does the same thing - but differently.

The time, for instance, in some will allow AM/PM but others use strictly military time; some allow time servers - others don't; some set the time manually while others set it via a checkbox, etc.

Given all of these Chinese-made cameras want to store your home
surveillance video & images on "the cloud", I'm wary of doing that.

Which is why the scores of 'free' 128GB sdcards to be formatted is coming
in handy as they all will get the same FAT32 volume label - once I figure
out what a good label name is (since the dashes I found out won't work).

What volume label name do people suggest that is compatible with most cams?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

Andrews <andrews@spam.net> wrote:

<back to the subject>

Hence the question... *Q: How do "you" format to FAT32 on Windows?*
...
Having not touched FAT32 for, oh, I don't know how long, decades
perhaps, I would like to ask 2 fundamental questions when dealing
with security cams.

1. What program on Windows do you use to format camera sdcards to
FAT32?
2. Since new sdcards have dashes by default, why does FAT32
not allow them?

For a 64GB micro SD card, Windows's built-in format offered only NTFS
and exFAT. I'm back on Windows 10, one of the newsgroups to which you cross-posted, which has the 32GB limit for its own formatter. As Paul mentioned, an probably for some minimum build version, Windows 11
removed the artificial limit of 32GB. File systems can exceed what an
OS will support. You can try to up capacity by changing to a larger
sector size (allocation unit), but can run into problems using other
disk tools that expect only the default sector size.

I needed FAT32 for the device where the uSD card gets used. I had
Easeus Partition Manager installed already, but it failed to format
citing errors (but not specifying what they were). I discovered the
problem was Easeus was defaulting to a logical partition (which is an
extension to a primary partition) instead of defaulting to a primary
partition, even after I had previously deleted the only partition on the
uSD card. Easeus would work once I went into advanced settings of the
format to select primary instead of logical. I ended up uninstalling
Easeus, and going with Minitools' Partition Wizard where I deleted any
existing partition(s), and which properly defaulted to a primary
partition, so I didn't have to figure out how to circumvent the format
error. Both Easeus and Minitools have free versions.

I've not used dashes in volume labels for decades. Instead I use camel
case to differentiate between word boundaries. For numbers, well, those
are already distinct from alpha chars. You could try using a period (.) instead of a dash (-). However, I just tested under Windows 10 Home x64
22H2, and it let me right-click on a drive, Properties, and change the
volume label to include a dash. However, I don't use FAT32 on any of my drives, and instead use NTFS, so that test was with an NTFS-formatted
drive. I had to dig out an old 32GB USB flash drive: a PNY 32GB.
Right-click on it in File Explorer, Properties. FAT32 formatted.
Changed the volume label from PNY32GBUSB to P-Y32GBUSB. Worked. Don't
know why whatever you used didn't like a dash char in the volume label.

https://www.keil.com/pack/doc/mw6/FileSystem/html/fat_fs.html
Volume label for FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32 volume must be maximum 11
characters long and cannot contain the following characters: * ? / \ | ,
; : + = < > [ ] "" .

Microsoft added exFAT support back in 2006 not to eliminate FAT32, but
to allow larger partition sizes. FAT32 max partition size is 2 TB
(without changing the default 512 byte sector size) with a max file size
of 4 GB minus 1 byte. exFAT is supports possibly bigger partitions and
file sizes, but that doesn't mean an OS does.

That a file partitioning scheme supports a large size does not mean a
formatter does. Win11 upped the partition size, but I think you have to
use the command-line formatter, not the GUI formatter. 3rd-party
partition managers have not had the limit for as long as I can remember.
To get past the 32 GB limit before, I used a 3rd-party formatter. While Windows won't format bigger, it will support bigger partitions.

FAT32 was the default factory formatting for removable storage -- until removable storage got much bigger. All formatting schemes have limits.
exFAt has a max partition size of 128 PB. Far larger than anything
available now, but, at one time, all you got for main memory on the mobo
was 640 KB, and had to use memory managers that paged in more RAM.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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