SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#1

Post by W4phle_Stomp » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 5:19 AM UTC

SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux
sdcard.org

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#2

Post by W4phle_Stomp » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 5:19 AM UTC

18 months ago I whined to their devs it'd be nice to have a version of their SD formatter for Linux, et voilà!, 18 months later, BOOM! - Awesome!! ... I"m not sure if my petulant whining and life-draining email verbosity provided the underlying motivation to their acquiescence, but until I'm provided contrary proof I'll assume it's so ;o)

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#3

Post by gdgghhhhh » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 5:57 AM UTC

I fear it's closed source?

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#4

Post by idle_zealot » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 6:02 AM UTC

I've always formatted SD cards like any other block device. This page mentions a secure section of the card that can somehow reduce performance if you don't treat it specially? What is this security section for, and do standard UNIXy partitioning tools have the ability to handle them properly, or do I have to use this proprietary(?) tarball if I want good SD performance?

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#5

Post by das-hinterland » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 6:11 AM UTC

gdgghhhhh wrote: post #3

I fear it's closed source?

It may be proprietary but it's developed by Tuxera, the same lads who created and maintain the NTFS drivers for Linux.

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#6

Post by upvota » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

idle_zealot wrote: post #4

I've always formatted SD cards like any other block device. This page mentions a secure section of the card that can somehow reduce performance if you don't treat it specially? What is this security section for, and do standard UNIXy partitioning tools have the ability to handle them properly, or do I have to use this proprietary(?) tarball if I want good SD performance?

This is really the first time I hear about special tools required for SD card formatting. Is it also “wrong” to use MacOS disk utility to format SD cards?

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#7

Post by gdgghhhhh » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

das-hinterland wrote: post #5

gdgghhhhh wrote: post #3

I fear it's closed source?

It may be proprietary but it's developed by Tuxera, the same lads who created and maintain the NTFS drivers for Linux.

So what? Don't get ne wrong, tuxera is cool but this still does not make it free software.

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#8

Post by senko » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 6:37 AM UTC

gdgghhhhh wrote: post #3

I fear it's closed source?

Is closed source not allowed for Linux?

If you want an open source SD card formatter for Linux, you can mkfs.vfat /dev/mmcblk0 all day long, works just fine.

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#9

Post by snvzz » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 6:38 AM UTC

das-hinterland wrote: post #5

gdgghhhhh wrote: post #3

I fear it's closed source?

It may be proprietary but it's developed by Tuxera, the same lads who created and maintain the NTFS drivers for Linux.

If it is a choice between preparing my sd cards with open partitioning tools, or running some non-auditable official tool in binary form, it is an easy choice.

I'll do the former, as I always have.

By the way, a cool quote from the agreement preceding the download page:

>3. RESTRICTIONS: You agree to NOT: (a) disassemble, reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to derive any source code for the SDA Software from executable code;

This should be quite alarming. They insist that we format SD cards with their tool, but they don't want us to know what the tool does.

I will not be the one reversing them, but I checked it is possible to download these through tor, and recommend downloading them that way to prevent potential trouble.

The hashes for the files I obtained are:

SDCardFormatterv1.0.2_Linux_ARM64

MD5: 2CF66295A29C5F496A489074CBC42CFA

SHA1: EE06C0C6834EB9F53E66343A7CFDB95FCCB5FF66

SHA256: 8695A0F441129845136AFEE01D94D6DBCCBE87BA7C904F045F2AF0613F9A1978

SDCardFormatterv1.0.2_Linux_x86_64

MD5: 459A698C3961BACA8103173B3CDA7173

SHA1: C28EFFDF05FF186E56C57476C2794CC7A7AE3AF0

SHA256: 3D961085954ABEB764265184A92C1114AA4CEF9CF12CA3C3337B6B63E0DBE0FB

Re: SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux

#10

Post by donatj » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 6:42 AM UTC

Hmm… I recently bought a modern original PlayStation memory card that saves to SD.

The first SD card I bought just would not work with it no matter what I tried.

Support actually had me download the “SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows” from this site and reformat my card. Did not fix the issue. I ended up just buying a new SD Card which did fix the issue.

At the time it just felt like support was grasping at straws and wasting my time, but sounds like maybe not? Very curious. I have always just formatted my cards with Disk Utility in macOS.