How can I reformat a Raspberry Pi SD card to FAT32 using another Raspberry Pi?

Hello condor,

For Windows
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

For Linux install
GPARTED

For MAC
Open "Disk utilities"

Ps all those are FREE

Hi Ivan, thanks for your comment! I'd prefer to do this via comment line under linux (on another Raspberry Pi running Rasbian preferably).

Oh yeah, it is also possible but you would need to figure out first how to mount the USB in the console, then you would have to use the commands of

Identification the USB
Fdisk -l
The wiping
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX

Be aware though Fatal damage to your current OS could happen if you are picking the incorrect USB, personally it would be way too much time and putting your raspbian in jeopardy vs using a regular PC

Do you have another card attached via a card reader to the PI?

Cause it sound to me that you want to format the card from where you loaded the OS.
It can be done, but any mistake is irreversible.

HTH,
Dan

Hi Dan and Ivan, I have a Raspberry Pi and I want to use the Pi to format another SD card that has a Pi's image on it. I am formatting the card with an external card reader. Sorry about the confusion.

OK.

From the command line, use fdisk or parted.

Hi Dan, I know that I could run fdisk -> d -> 1 -> n to delete the original partitions and create a new one. But I don't know how to format the new partition to FAT32 which is just like a normal thumb drive in order to use on Windows. Thanks!

umount /dev/sdaX
mkdosfs -F 32 -I /dev/sdaX

where /dev/sdaX is the partition you want to format (you find that using fdisk -l)

does mkfs.vfat do the same thing? I tried mkfs.vfat but it doesn't seem to work.

Vfat is not the same as FAT32: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc750354.aspx

Use official sd card formatter on windows.

>> I tried mkfs.vfat but it doesn't seem to work.
Was creating the filesystem not successful? Or did the format finish but could you not read the formatted device? Or was there some other error, if so what was it?

Gerwin: official formater reprograms SD-card to avoid burned out flash sectors. It is highly desirable if other formatting ways dont work.
Linux way going as close to official formatter as we can should be (assuming recent distribution that aligns disk structures to :2^n sectors, not %63=0)
fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
n p 1 (1st partition must start at 1M aka 2048)
c 1 (type = 1 FAT12)
then
mkfs.vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1

Burned out? Any reference to that?
Besides the fact that asker may not have a Windows machine, a photo camera can also be used to format SD cards, they have a built-in formatter.

@Gerwin, when I used mkfs.vfat, it doesn't seem to be able to create FAT32 partition. So I'll probably try to use "mkdosfs -F 32 -I /dev/sdaX" as Dan pointed out. Do you think that'll work when use a rpi to format an external SD card to FAT32?

@gheist, , as the above picture shows, the DOS compatibility flag (pressing c) seems to be deprecated.

Also after using mkfs.vfat to format, the /dev/sda1 (external drive partition) is Linux, not FAT. Please see the following two pictures.

FYI, the whole sequence of operations is as follows:
sudo fdisk /dev/sda
(use d to delete the existing partitions)
n p 1 <enter> <enter>
c w

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1

Please advise. Thanks!

I ran "sudo mkdosfs -F 32 -I /dev/sda1" this as well as Dan suggested. But it does't seem to work as well. Please see the following screencast. The "System" is still "Linux".

I can test for you later today.

Thanks Gerwin. Basically my requirement is with a rpi (here I use it just as a Linux machine) to change an external SD card (loaded with rpi image, but not the currently working one) back to FAT32 so that it is a normal SD card that can be used on Windows.

Unmount first (do not open SD card in PI.
Instrad of c you must type t (partition type)

Hi Gerwin, thanks, that works!

But one thing I don't understand is that you did "change type (c for FAT32) " and then "mkdosfs -v -F 32 /dev/sdb1", what are the difference between the two? Why do we need to do the FAT32 thing twice?

And Gerwin, I have another question for you. Suppose I have a SD card loaded with rpi image, and I want to refresh the image to a new version. Do I have to format the SD card to FAT32 before I use dd to write the rpi image to the card?

No, you do not need to format extra time.
There is no difference between mkfs.vfat and mkfs.msdos

Hi Gerwin, sorry about the delay, I still have a question for you.

But one thing I don't understand is that you did "change type (c for FAT32) " and then "mkdosfs -v -F 32 /dev/sdb1", what are the difference between the two? Why do we need to do the FAT32 thing twice?

You can do once, open a new question and ask why such injustice...
Your question states HOW ... ? Which means that you get over motivation part yourself.

Hi gheist, thanks for providing some great input comments for this question. But if you check the above thread, you can find that I ask this before to Gerwin but was not answered. You did contribute some input but wasn't directly targeted at this (or maybe I didn't get it right). I think that's the crucial part of the thread since it seems to be the only difference between my original approach and Gerwin's method. So it'll be great if he can provide just a little bit more explanation on that. Thanks for you all again.

Hello condor888, I always create a partition first before I create the file system (habit). So I change (c) the partition type to FAT32 before I do the 'format'. Note that the mkfs command has a partition parameter (/dev/sdb1) and not a device (/dev/sdb) to know where it needs to create the file system, the type (-F 32) would be redundant because the partition type has been set already. I never checked what mkfs command does when you try to run it without creating a partition first. We can try this of course.

Hi Gerwin, thanks for your quick reply. But I think if we only do mkfs without changing the partition type to FAT32 based on my test. That is why I asked this question. Maybe I did something wrong though. When you get a chance, would you please have a try on that?

>> When you get a chance, would you please have a try on that?
Of course - later today. Will post back the results.

It's quite a log that is posted below, the result is that mkdosfs will not make a partition for you. You need to do that upfront. That and set the partition type to FAT32 before formatting. I left partition type to Linux and tried to format, that didn't work.

Disk /dev/sda: 8068 MB, 8068792320 bytes
249 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1020 cylinders, total 15759360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Command (m for help): q

root@raspberrypi:~# mkdosfs -v -F 32 /dev/sda1
mkdosfs 3.0.13 (30 Jun 2012)
/dev/sda1: No such file or directory
root@raspberrypi:~# mkdosfs -v -F 32 /dev/sda 
mkdosfs 3.0.13 (30 Jun 2012)
mkdosfs: Device partition expected, not making filesystem on entire device '/dev/sda' (use -I to override)
root@raspberrypi:~# mkdosfs -v -F 32 -I /dev/sda
mkdosfs 3.0.13 (30 Jun 2012)
/dev/sda has 249 heads and 62 sectors per track,
logical sector size is 512,
using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 15759360 sectors;
file system has 2 32-bit FATs and 8 sectors per cluster.
FAT size is 15360 sectors, and provides 1966076 clusters.
There are 32 reserved sectors.
Volume ID is 921f017f, no volume label.
root@raspberrypi:~# fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 8068 MB, 8068792320 bytes
249 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1020 cylinders, total 15759360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Command (m for help): 

root@raspberrypi:~# fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 8068 MB, 8068792320 bytes
249 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1020 cylinders, total 15759360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Command (m for help): n
Partition type:
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-15759359, default 2048): 
Using default value 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-15759359, default 15759359): 
Using default value 15759359

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
root@raspberrypi:~# mkdosfs -v -F 32 /dev/sda1
mkdosfs 3.0.13 (30 Jun 2012)
/dev/sda1 has 249 heads and 62 sectors per track,
logical sector size is 512,
using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 15757312 sectors;
file system has 2 32-bit FATs and 8 sectors per cluster.
FAT size is 15360 sectors, and provides 1965820 clusters.
There are 32 reserved sectors.
Volume ID is 97535fe6, no volume label.
root@raspberrypi:~# fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 8068 MB, 8068792320 bytes
204 heads, 14 sectors/track, 5517 cylinders, total 15759360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    15759359     7878656   83  Linux

Command (m for help): 

root@raspberrypi:~# fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 8068 MB, 8068792320 bytes
204 heads, 14 sectors/track, 5517 cylinders, total 15759360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    15759359     7878656   83  Linux

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): c
Changed system type of partition 1 to c (W95 FAT32 (LBA))

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 8068 MB, 8068792320 bytes
204 heads, 14 sectors/track, 5517 cylinders, total 15759360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    15759359     7878656    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: If you have created or modified any DOS 6.x
partitions, please see the fdisk manual page for additional
information.
Syncing disks.
root@raspberrypi:~# mkdosfs -v -F 32 /dev/sda1
mkdosfs 3.0.13 (30 Jun 2012)
/dev/sda1 has 249 heads and 62 sectors per track,
logical sector size is 512,
using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 15757312 sectors;
file system has 2 32-bit FATs and 8 sectors per cluster.
FAT size is 15360 sectors, and provides 1965820 clusters.
There are 32 reserved sectors.
Volume ID is 9d7734ee, no volume label.
root@raspberrypi:~# fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 8068 MB, 8068792320 bytes
204 heads, 14 sectors/track, 5517 cylinders, total 15759360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    15759359     7878656    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Command (m for help): q

root@raspberrypi:~# ls /mnt
root@raspberrypi:~# mkdir /mnt/sda1
root@raspberrypi:~# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
root@raspberrypi:~# mount | grep sda
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/sda1 type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
root@raspberrypi:~# df /mnt/sda1
Filesystem     1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1        7863280     4   7863276   1% /mnt/sda1
root@raspberrypi:~# 

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Hi Gerwin, thanks for your reply. So the "t     c"  is for changing the partition type to FAT32 (does the change happen in the MBR?), while the "mkdosfs -v -F 32 /dev/sda1" is doing the actual formatting. Both are needed. Did I get it right?

Thanks!

Yes, but the partition is in the partition table. MBR is the master boot record. t changes type, c is for FAT32, mkfs commands make the file system (or do the formatting).

Thanks, Gerwin. You are very helpful!