you seems like a teacher and I wish all teachers were like you..... great video man

10:01 No, what's happening is that those phones are able to format a drive using an out of (strict) spec FAT32, not exFAT (also called FAT64). FAT32 is limited to 32GB by MS for practicality reasons (and also to push NTFS), but it can actually access a drive up to 2TB using 512KB (yes, kilobyte) sectors or 16TB using 4MB (yes, megabyte) sectors, which is fine for large files, but then any file smaller than the sector size will always take up an entire sector EACH (until you defrag the partition). Also, any file which takes up a full sector, plus 1 byte, will take up 2 full sectors. so, if you have a 4MB (4,194,304 bytes) sector size, and you have a file which is 4,194,305 bytes, it will physically take up 8MB of space. MS is limited to 4096byte sectors to limit that fragmentation. Any device which correctly supports FAT32 will read the out of spec format just fine, including Windows XP machines (not older, though), you just need a formatter which will create an out of spec partition.

This video was really informative! Been a while since the last time i saw such a straightforward, simple and valuable video in just under 15 minutes! Great work!

I really like Gary's clear, concise teaching style. I hope he keeps adding content.

Bloody brilliant explanation! Made it easier to understand for non-techies.

Very informative. I searched all over the net and couldn't find the answers I was looking for in regards to how much expandable memory my phone could expand to until I watched this video .

watching this 10 months later and it made me learn new info, thats when you know how good the video is.

I can't get enough of these videos. Keep it up Gary!

It's good to see you again, Sir. I always learn something useful from your videos. Thank you.

Thank You! I'm new at this, I didn't even know what format to my camera meant and I now know how easy it is to format thanks to you.

Congratulations, this is the best explanation I've seen on the subject. Great video!

You just clearly answered several questions I have been asking for 10+ years. I thank you sir it means alot

Great Video and information, I agree with Jason K about how a graph would certainly expedite the knowledge crystallization. I have never had any issues with swapping in higher capacity cards in my Motorola Droid2,, Droid4 and Wifeys SG5. Until I upgrade my phone again I have been granted a temporary reprieve with the Droid Turbo (64GB and sans MicroSD slot).

Excellent presentation. I like this guy's explanations of things. He keeps things simple.

Thanks Gary! Well Done! It is one thing to know this stuff, and quite another to present it in a meaningful way in a video. Awesome!

i love this man ! he is awesome, the best in android authority team 👍

Very nicely explained. Easy to understand. Now those formatting formats make some sense. Thanks Gary

Hearing this guy talk about FAT made my night lol

Really informative video, but a simple illustration or table or graph that says what format works and what doesn't work will be much easier for people to grasp, instead of pure listening. I watched twice to fully understand this video.

I'm an electrical engineering student and I find your video really informative.. :D

I use exFAT on all my internal and external hard drive, simply because NTFS Security/Permission screwing up when standard user vs admin user profile.

You're simply the best Gary.. I'm watching all your videos as if I'm in a lecture.. (y)

This guy Gary, does some of the best android rewies. Awesome!

my favourite youtube lecturer

great video, very informative. does formatting the 128gb sd card to fat32 reduce the 128gb usage capacity of the card?

Fantastic video for the SD cards and File Systems.

I've got a SanDisk 200gb in my Galaxy s4. Works like a charm. Picked it up a few months ago on Amazon for sale price of $60.

Really good and interesting info.. Thank you Gary

your explanation is more clear and easy to understand than my computer science professors.. And it was actually interesting :)

Your videos are brilliant Gary, you teach me with patronising me or me losing interested.

Excellent explanation. Very informative and well presented.

Love these kinds of videos. More please!

Thank you sir for this informative video

Guru Gary does it again! Amazing video as usual.

Very Informative as are all your vids. Thanks for sharing the info.

I learned something new. Thank you Gary!

Wow. Very detailed breakdown - thanks.

i study computer science and what i can tell you is that FAT32 will and should work well with sd cards up to 500gb max as what my teacher told me. just because it's called FAT32 doesnt mean it can only handle 32Gb that's a load of bull. 32 was meant for 32bit if im not mistaken and it will very well support drives higher than 32gb. limitation: -file size creation (like videos and so on that's why it's only 2 hours max in some devices for videos and so on) -the amount of sub folders that you can create within them. (i forgot how many but its not that much) -get's fragmentation problems and becomes inefficient with bigger drives (if its more than 500gb or more than 320gb stick with NTFS or extendedFAT) -security: if you have lots of data on a drive that is bigger than the said drives then you might run into some problems like lost or corrupt data. that's why microsoft made the NTFS because it's safer more efficient and is quicker.-less fragmentation on hard disks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- advantages: -compatability -simpler ---(i think)--- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -FAT32 is ideal for small drives as they need less tables to operate them from what my teacher said its great for small memory devices like sd cards and flash drives. -note: i formatted one of my extra drives with FAT32 that's a 320gb drive and it works FINE. no problems just defragment it when things start to slow down. i did it for funziez -extra note: playstation3's uses FAT32 from factory and works fine and you see those sporting 500gb these days. well this is a long comment.. *drops virtual potato* :D

really helpful video. thanks for making videos like this.

thank you Gary! hats off man!

Great explanation 👍 very informative. Thanks

Great info. *Thx* !!!! I wonder what if the card formated as ext4, as all new Android device have ext4 support.

Excellent presentation, thanks.

this is highly relatable with me encountering problems a 128GB micro SD card working on my new nintendo 3ds portable. had to do some research on this and look for a workaround to format the sd card with fat32 :I

I love you Gary. Not only you are excelent at explaning how technology works. You also make this very entertaining.

Very interesting, we learn all the time---THANKS

good vid, do you have a recomended tool for formatting?

You know it's a good video when the opening line is... It's simple, but it's not... Love it

What I don't understand is why the Android phone manufacturers simply didn't go with an open format such as ext4 for the larger SD cards; it would have been *free* for them to do so. Ditto for other equipment manufacturers, such as TV, photocopiers, etc. The only roadblock would have been Windows' current inability to recognize this filesystem, but AFAIK, with the right driver added, Windows should be able to recognize it as well as exFAT.

update from the future! march 2019 the 1TB sdxc card has come out :P

Or just format as ext4, most Android phones use that as their filesystems by default.

Perfect explanation, thanx

very well said . . . thanks . . .

The Gary that was a super helpful video, "the more you know".... (I just put remix OS on an exFAT Samsung 128GB usb3 (dongle) thumb drive.)

Awesome explanation.

Finally a guy who's capable of explain such an important issue in an understandable way, congratulations Gary, and looking forward to see the logical lecture: How FAT, FAT32, NTFS and ex-FAT handle the file sizes in the same pedagogical way you made this one.

love the videos keep em coming!

I lost 3 hours of footage because I didn't know my old camera didn't recognize exFAT from my 64Gb card and kept writing over older files. Very sad, but now I am improving my knowledge about that. Going back to my 32Gb card. It should be noted that sometimes it appears to be working, but it is in fact doing something strange, like overwriting it's own data over and over, so from now on I always follow the manufacturer's advice.

good explanation. clearly a pro :) keep it up

I'd like to see an informative video about sd speeds too. How important it actually is on a smartphone if i am going to use it only for photos and music or if its going to be used for apps too. do the apps run slower in a slower sd etc .

Awesome video as always. Quick question, is there a W/R speed difference between the different file formats?

To enable exFAT support on Linux for distribution that use apt as package manager like Ubuntu you can just open a Terminal and give this command: sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils Reboot the system and you're done, you now have full exFAT support on your Linux system and you're able to mount, read and write removable drives. You're welcome

I was just doing research on this a week ago, so this came in at the perfect time!

very informative , thanks alot.

Gary you are a smart guy. Good for you

gary and juan (from pocketnow) are the 2 best techies imo

Phenomenally helpful video!!!!

Nice video. I thought I'd share my experience. Now I have no idea if this works for exfat but I had a usb drive formated in ntfs. While android didn't show it as recognized, I was able to read and write to it using es file explorer.

Great vid. Thank you.

so now i know that my old sd card is not broken, i just need to format it. Thanks Gary!

this guy is my new best teacher in tech :))

In October 2018 I put a 256GB micro-SD card in my Huawei Y7 and it worked perfectly. Two weeks ago I transferred it to my new Huawei Nova 3e ("P20Lite") -- perfect results again.

very useful

Doesn't the maximum storage limit also depend on the processors data bus size? Or is it just for the RAM?

Wow that was very informative thanks I feel smarter now! 👍

Sometimes, for new sdcard can be format type is FAT32 because old or new phone can read for FAT32 only. For old phone only said up to 32GB and new phone said up to 64/128/256/512GB or more. For old smartphone user, you can use more than 32GB with format to FAT32. Example for my phone is HUAWEI Y3II, manufacture sdcard up to 32GB. But i put my 128GB sdcard to my phone, and suprising it read it.

Very informative.

interesting thanks Gary

formatting my external 8tb hdd to exfat, made my 2015 Samsung JS8500 4k tv to fully recognize it. I thought my tv can't recognize anything past 2TB or less. I'm so happy I don't have to shop for another tv for a very long time.

i have a 64gb sd card in my LG G4 and because i use custom roms and kernels there has been a few problems with different kernels not using exfat , everythings fine now and i can use my sdcard as my primary storage so all my apps and games get installed on the sdcard instead of internal storage....

Gary explain's everything

Great video, SD card is one of the best invention of computer technology or the information age. SD card allow me to carry my files, book library, music collection, video library and photo albums everywhere with me. It is amazing how much files i can store in a 32 GB SD card.

Great info, thanks.

Very informative

Great info for me, thanks

Thanx for ur information ☺️

Is the writing speed the most important factor when looking for my first SD card for my smartphone (Nokia 7+) I want it for saving video files, ie from the camera app. Currently it seems the maximum film(s) I can save is about 30-40 minutes only .... Perhaps made up from 10 short clips. If I am near home I can easily transfer these to my computer then start filming again, but if I am further away I'll need more memory. Have you are preferred card for early 2020 please ? Thanks !

love your logo android authority

loved the video!!! very unnoticed useful stuff Android Authority people get us. btw one small doubt, if the higher capacity card is formatted as FAT32, will I be able to access the complete storage capacity and not just 32 gigs? if yes then this a great hack mahn!!!!!

That's the most useful video I've seen in years. I couldn't read my 128gb card from my phone in my win XP PC. This explains everything. I hate the fact that everyone has to pay Microsoft though.

awesome explanation!!!

That trick worked in a SDHC camcorder I had formatting a 64gb SDXC as FAT32. I also had another SDXC camcorder that wouldn't work with cards bigger than 256GB so no all SDXC Devices support up to 2TB.

but did you test if those phones with 32GB limit will write any data when the that limit is reached despite the card being formatted has more capacity. i remember vaguely an mp3 player, back when mp3 players were a thing, when i bought a higher capacity storage it just never read the songs beyond that or when it did get to a song that just passed the threshold, the player just crashed. it was a phillips or sandisk player.

I like ur epxlanations Gary...!

much needed, thanks 😎

awesome info

Interesting video. Although just to throw a spanner in the works with android version 6 (Marshmallow) if you wish to use the SD card as internal storage it has to be of the faster memory type, otherwise it doesn't work!!

That was quite an informative video!! But had a query to make. Will putting a card bigger than 32 GB in a phone that officially supports only 32GB of external expandable storage affect its performance in any way? Like R/W speeds or lags?

Good info, thanks!

Very useful Gary. Cheers