[mvitale]

Do I have to? Why? How?

[SanFrancisco]

Originally Posted by mvitale

Do I have to? Why? How?

FWIW I have NEVER had to format a MicroSD chip "out of the package." I simply ripped open the plastic, inserted the chip into the Pearl and it has always fired up.

I have done this five times with the five different chips I have purchased [all 1GB]. Four were Kingston chips and one SanDisk.

Warning: Others' experience may differ.

[puckplayer4]

Agreed...same here.

[d_fisher]

There are a few reasons why you would want to format the card. 1) You want to delete everything off the card. 2) If the device cant read the existing data on the card it may ask you to format the card.

To format the card go to Options > Advanced Options > Memory Card. Press the scroll wheel and select Format Card.

[John Clark]

Originally Posted by d_fisher

To format the card go to Options > Advanced Options > Memory Card. Press the scroll wheel and select Format Card.

above instructions are correct except after you get to Media card, press the menu key and then select Format Card....

[aaronkt]

If you format the card with Windows explorer and put it in the BB it wont work. Your Pearl wont see the card. the BB has to format the card. It needs the files it puts on the card once its formatted. Good luck!

[Amigadude]

Ok my dilema might not be BB related but it has to do with the Micro SD card that i screwed up. Today i received my new 2gig Micro SD card in the mail (i am using a 1 gig at the moment). I was gonna use the 2 gig for the Nintendo DS M3 movie player so i can store about 9 full length movies on it (movies are scaled down and converted into a format that the M3 reads). I put my SD card into the reader and all was good. The M3 likes the FAT32 file system (so i have read) in order to play movies properly so i right clicked on the drive icon and chose Format from the pulldown menu. All was good, until i right click and go to proterties. Drive capacity was showing 1.8gig, 800meg of it was showing in use and only 1gig being free. After loading a few disk tools and susing out what was hogging my card space, i found out it was being used for system files. WTF does 800meg of system files dumped on my micro SD for?? These system files are hidden and no matter what i tried doing i could not get the space back, so i put the card into my Kodak digital camera and tried formatting it there to get my 2 gig back. That process went ok , or so i thought. I put the card back into the reader and now it only shows 1gig capacity. Are there any way or tools that might help me recover the non existing 1 gig. Partition magic does not list the drive. If it did i could recover the lost space.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[churchill]

I think what is confusing you are two issues. I just went thru this process myself, and also have been a computer techie for about 20 years. When ANY disk or card says it has a certain capacity, whether its 500 gigabytes or 2 gigabytes, that is misleading, they are rounding up to the the nearest even number. For example, my 500 gig disk actually had about 487 gig on it after formatting. My two gig sandisk card for my bberry comes out of the format with around 1.8 gig on it. In addition, as you mentioned you used the FAT format method, FAT stands for file allocation table, and guess what there is a table on that disk and the system reserves space for itself to put all the file pointers in the table when you add a file. This is how operating systems whether its a blackberry, pc (which can also use ntfs), or macs are able to have a method for you and programs to find files when their needed.
In your case, put the disk back in the bberry, format it and you will get your 1.8 or so gig back and thats the way it is. If you google this topic, you will probably be able to find the algorithm that lets you calculate actual capacities. So format that bad boy and go enjoy your phone.....