sd memory card formatter linux for raspberry pi 3

#SD MEMORY CARD FORMATTER LINUX FOR RASPBERRY PI 3 SOFTWARE#
#SD MEMORY CARD FORMATTER LINUX FOR RASPBERRY PI 3 LICENSE#
#SD MEMORY CARD FORMATTER LINUX FOR RASPBERRY PI 3 DOWNLOAD#

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

#SD MEMORY CARD FORMATTER LINUX FOR RASPBERRY PI 3 SOFTWARE#

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

#SD MEMORY CARD FORMATTER LINUX FOR RASPBERRY PI 3 DOWNLOAD#

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.īy the way, a cool quote from the agreement preceding the download page: Also, what makes you so sure that mkfs.vfat can even find out how many sectors into /dev/sdb, /dev/sdb1 starts, to do the math right? For that matter, what makes you think it would even know to check for SD-card-ness of /dev/sdb? Well, you’d be surprised how many devices/firmwares break with nonstandard values there. Wait! You might say that FAT already has “resevered sectors” value we can use for this. That means that we need the partition to start at sector 7. Say we work out that our various FS Structures need 17 sectors. So we want our first FAT cluster to start at a multiple of 8 (and be a multiple of sectors in size). Say in your fictional card, we have 4KB pages. For proper alignment you may need to start the partition on the right block as well. The formatting code there only formats a partition. Why dont windows/Linux/macOS do it right themselves? My guess? Separation of concerns. Lacking those commands, it is as if the secure area doesn’t exist.Ħ. This tool and basically any device you’ll ever encounter in your everyday life do not use them. Secure area exists on all cards (yes you are paying for flash you cannot use).

#SD MEMORY CARD FORMATTER LINUX FOR RASPBERRY PI 3 LICENSE#

Costs a lot of money to license the SD security stuff. What is this about the secure area? The tool just says it doesn’t touch it. Thus we have this tool and ones like it.ĥ.

Why not sd? There isn’t a command in the spec for that and adding it now is too late - nobody will use it. Why doesn’t the card just do it in firmware all by itself? Curiously sony memory stick does this. What about my gopro, my phone, or $DEVICE-X that can format SD cards? Well, most device firmwares DO indeed do this correctly as the SD spec advises to do.Ĥ. Why not just mkfs.vfat? You can, but unless you do some of the above work yourself and some math, you’re unlikely to get the alignment right and will suffer because of it, especially on small or random writes. How? Well in the CSD register (accessible using SD commands), the NAND geometry is given, so all it takes is reading that and creating a file system that is properly aligned.Ģ. Aligning your file system clusters with these flash pages will allow SIGNIFICANTLY better performance and lower wear. But as per spec SD cards must allow writes at 512 byte granularity. NAND in SD cards has page size (minimum writeable piece) something like 4kB or 8KB, or maybe even 64KB. Let me try to clarify (all of this is very very simplified).ġ.

Sd memory card formatter linux for raspberry pi 3