Thread: Nanocom - formatting an SD card in FAT16 on a Mac

Nanocom Evolution (and probably other Nanocom devices) require SD cards to be in FAT16 format. This is not the default format for modern SD cards!

Here’s the procedure for formatting an SD card in FAT16 on a Mac.
(PC instructions are in Nanocom's quickstart instructions supplied with the device)

Note for new Nanocom users (including myself!): When you plug an SD card into your Nanocom and then use the USB cable to plug it into your PC/MAC, it acts just like any normal SD card reader or other external drive, from which you can download, upload or edit files. This is in my view a very sensible way of interfacing with PC/MAC any computer when compared to say a software interface, which is generally a pain in the a$$ (even on my iPhone) - great work Blackbox.

Go to Finder, open the Applications folder, where you’ll find the Utilities folder and in Utilities you’ll find the “Terminal" application. Open it and you get a mysterious black screen with some writing before your cursor which you can ignore. Do not be afraid, if you get the code wrong it won’t hurt your computer or files as it won’t do anything.

1 Type:
sudo diskutil list then press Return/Enter

2 Enter the administrator password when prompted, then press Return/Enter If you don't know what this, it should be the password of the main user (PM me and I might be able to help if that fails).

3 Make a note of the disk number of the SD card /dev/diskx. It will be something like /dev/disk1 or /dev/disk2 The disk number in each case is 1 and then 2. We can call this number x for now. CHECK THIS TWICE! The SD card will be identifiable from other drives by its capacity in MB or GB, make sure you don’t put in the wrong numeral after disk in the procedure below or you may erase any auxiliary drive you’ve connected or perhaps even upset your main drive (very bad). Decide what you’ll call the SD drive, for example Fat16 Nanocom and include that in quotes below where it says volumename.

4 This is where you format the SD card straight from Terminal (cool huh). Include quotation marks and spaces exactly as they are written, replacing the x in /dev/diskx with the number (1, 2 or 3 or whatever it was you found in step 3) and volumename with your name of choice (do type the quotation marks). If you have a 2GB card try replacing 1000M with 2048M to maximize file size capacity (*see below) but if it fails try a lower number or just 1000M as I know it works.

Type:
sudo diskutil partitionDisk /dev/diskx 1 MBRFormat "MS-DOS FAT16″ "volumename" 1000M
then press Return/enter


This procedure was sourced and adapted from:
How to Format an SD Card to FAT16 in Snow Leopard | eHow.com

I reworded it not as an attempt to take credit for it but to make it clearer for first time Terminal users (the use of quotation marks and explanation of 1000M capacity command I found a little confusing).

*On the original link they inform us that the 1000M final command is the partition size in megabytes, which you can set at any number up to 2048M (which is 2GB, the maximum partition size for FAT16 format). Partitions are essentially pockets in your SD card’s memory (same in any hard drive) and any single file goes into only one pocket, if you create a 1000 megabyte pocket (by typing 1000M), no file above 1000 megabytes can be saved (achtung! caution!) as you can’t split files across partitions. That’s why I advise you to try for 2048M. I only figured this out after this case but it doesn’t matter for my SD card as it was only 1GB capacity. For this reason if the procedure fails on first try for a smaller SD card (say 250M, I would try setting the number to the card’s capacity eg 250M.



The Skinny on FAT

Here’s the blurb on why we need to format FAT16 for Nanocom and why we need to use Terminal of a Mac:

The only obstacle I've yet found for the Mac user is formatting the SD card for storing data from and uploading data to the Nanocom. The manual states that it must be formatted in FAT format but not FAT32

This I have presumed to be FAT16, the FAT format that was commonly used before FAT32 became the new standard, as FAT16 is the format for early SD cards under 2Gb and Nanocom specifies SD cards under 2GB be used (the 16 bit structure on FAT16 entailed a 2GB limit). That is how I understand it anyways. FAT16 appears to be working fine on my Nanocom, but someone please correct me if FAT16 is not the right format.

Nanocom’s manual gives instructions on how to format to FAT (meaning FAT16) on Windoze (did I misspell that? ). Mac’s standard application for formatting disks/cards is Disk Utility but current versions will format to FAT32 (called MS-DOS in Utilities format menu) and ExFAT (which isn’t really FAT at all) but not to FAT16 which is to be expected because FAT16 is ‘obsolete’ in general use (but still useful for many dedicated devices such as Nanocom).
I used the above procedure to format my 1GB SD card (a micro SD card from 2009 and used in FAT32 for three years) in FAT16 on my Mac computer running Snow Leopard operating system from 2010, but the procedure should be the same for Lion OS as you use the ‘Terminal’ application to talk straight to the OS using Unix code like the supergeeks on Big Bang Theory would. It’s dead easy so don’t worry. In fact it is the first time I’ve successfully used Terminal and took less than 5 minutes (give it a go, it’ll put hair on your chest)! The reason we must format on a computer is because, unlike you beaut Canon and Sony cameras and other devices from extremely well equipped IT giants, the device itself doesn’t have a “format SD card” function. (Some might criticize Nanocom for this, but cut them some slack eh. It’s like criticizing Victa for outsourcing their four strokes). I think the reason some people may have had trouble with SD cards in their Nanocom is that the majority you’ll find in a store or kicking around the bottom of your drawer, regardless of age or capacity, have already been formatted to FAT32. Two explanations for this are that SD cards sold in the last few years are preformatted to FAT32, and that as soon as you use any SD card in a modern camera, PDA or computer it will format it to FAT32, whether it’s 8GB, 2GB or some SD card from 2002 of just 250MB capacity. Some older devices are probably exceptions, so if you have a ‘vintage’ game console circa 2002 it might do the trick (I couldn’t tell a Wii from an Xbox but a Y-Gener might know).

Rich

PS: I know very little about computers and this is the first time I've looked into any of this. So anyone in the IT scene/industry who reads this go easy on me, but please point out any errors without hesitation as I don't want to mislead folks.

Disclaimer: I have no qualifications in this area and in fact understand very little of what I’m doing. I found this procedure worked for me and if it works for you that’s great but please only refer to my experiences for making decisions about your own actions with great caution, knowing that you are responsible for any damage or injury that might occur as a result.

FAT32 has worked perfectly well with all firmware revisions released this year at least. I currently use a 8GB SanDisk Ultra SDHC SDcard.

If you do want to go through the routine of formatting to FAT16 from the command line on OSX it worth noting that administrative privileges are not required to reformat a removable disk, so the sudo command and admin password are not required.


you can use:

diskutil list

and

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/diskx 1 MBRFormat "MS-DOS FAT16″ "volumename" 1000M

If you don't need to alter partition sizes you can also use

diskutil eraseDisk "MS-DOS FAT16" "volumename" /dev/diskx

However this will throw an error on cards larger than 2GB.

cheers
Paul