Compatible SD Cards

[Mach]

2 GB Sandisk - no problems.

  Now that is interesting.

                                    henwrench

I got the Sandisk 1GB. I understand that the MBR is equipped to take up to a 2GB but for some reason will not recognize it as 2 gigs of storage. Why's that? It will only recognize 1 gig of the 2?

[cuthbert]

I got the Sandisk 1GB. I understand that the MBR is equipped to take up to a 2GB but for some reason will not recognize it as 2 gigs of storage. Why's that? It will only recognize 1 gig of the 2?

It's my understanding (never tried it) that the MBR may work with a 2GB card, but only recognizes 1GB and that this is a limitation of the SD card reader hardware itself - it only supports up to 1GB.

[64Guitars]

It's my understanding (never tried it) that the MBR may work with a 2GB card, but only recognizes 1GB and that this is a limitation of the SD card reader hardware itself - it only supports up to 1GB.

Actually, it's not a limitation of the hardware. It's a limitation of the BR's operating system which uses the FAT16 file system for storage. For the technical explanation, see the FAQ on my website.

[Glenn Mitchell]

Received my free SD card yesterday.  Seems to be working fine!! Would like to try a larger card at some future date.

What was this about "free" SD cards?

[kumale]

I've had incredible problems with TRANSCEND SD card==>

Now i'm working with a generic SD card bought online
(http://www.thomann.de/ie/thomann_sd_card_1gb.htm)
and it works fine==> !

I can confirm that MicroBR performances (mainly if you're not able to do the sw upgrade)
are really dependent from the different SD card!

[RoadRanger]

Thought you all would be amused that I have a "Connect 3D Secure Digital 4GB" card that works fine on the MBR once I initialized it on the MBR. Examining the card afterwards I find that it now has a primary partition of just under 1GB and the rest of the space (almost 3GB) is unallocated. Boss's latest compatibility list has several 2GB cards on it but warns you that they will be permanently 1GB if initialized on the MBR - not true, I had no problem formatting it back to 4GB and back again to MBR compatible. This card I have is one of the rather rare non-SDHC 4GB cards they made just before the SDHC cards came out and is kinda a bastard as non-SDHC cards are only "standard" up to 2GB - I bought it to use in a Noika N800 that is compatible with it but has since has its firmware upgraded to work with SDHC cards too.

If you want a free tool to examine the 1GB partition created by the MBR on your 2GB cards this one works great:
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

BTW Windows supports FAT16 drives up to 4GB in size:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310561

[bonniebilly]

Bought a sandisk 4gb SDHC (SDSDB-004G-B35) this evening and only found out afterwards about he
limitations due to the file system. Tried formatting it as FAT16 but still wouldn't work.

Bummer.

Luckily, I had a Lexar multi-use 2GB SD card lying about that worked after formatting as FAT16. I presume from the other posts that only 1gb will be useable though.

[sublurbansounds]

I've just recently bought a Boss Micro BR and happily my 2GB SD cards work just fine.  I did also update to firmware v1.04 just as a precaution.  They are a Sandisk Extreme III SD 2GB SD card BE0710102992B and a Veho 2GB SD card I3H2G-083203.  They are initialised by the Boss Micro BR as FAT-16 with 1GB capacity.