Large FAT32 partition support on SD cards

hooby3dfx · May 26, 2017 at 3:07 AM

For installs on embedded devices running off of SD cards (ie Raspberry Pi), the partition layout appears to be a FAT boot partition that contains the kernel and system file system (SquashFS), and then the rest of the card is formatted with a large ext4 partition.

The downside of this is that if the SD card is then inserted into a Windows PC, only the small boot partition will be naively mounted - so you cannot copy over media files directly.

(Paragon has a free Windows program that works well for Windows to read/write ext4 but that is not very straightforward, and not a free option for OSX users.)

This feature request is for a "supported" method of resizing the ext4 partition to a large FAT32 partition; so on a 32 GB SD card for example:

~1GB - system/boot

~2GB - ext4 system extra space

~25GB - FAT32 user media space

Originally requested on downstream project Lakka: Feature request - allow SD card file transfer · Issue #125 · libretro/Lakka-LibreELEC · GitHub

trogggy · May 26, 2017 at 9:38 AM

OSX is a closed book to me, but windows only sees the first partition on removeable media so an extra fat32 partition on an sd card wouldn't be visible.

**chewitt** · May 26, 2017 at 10:07 AM Official Post

MacOS would ignore the ext4 partition and mount the two FAT32 ones, but as Windows doesn't understand multiple partitions on USB/SD media there isn't much point. Request denied

**Iridium** · May 26, 2017 at 8:25 PM Official Post

I think you'd be better off using a smaller SD card (2G) for LE and a larger USB stick for /storage.

I use a SD for LE and /storage is on a SSD and works a dream. If I'm correct LE is loaded into memory at start, so speed is not essential - as to the format of /storage I don't think it would make a difference to LE.

trogggy · May 26, 2017 at 8:36 PM

Quote from Iridium

I think you'd be better off using a smaller SD card (2G) for LE and a larger USB stick for /storage.

I use a SD for LE and /storage is on a SSD and works a dream. If I'm correct LE is loaded into memory at start, so speed is not essential - as to the format of /storage I don't think it would make a difference to LE.

I tried using a fat32 storage partition a few years ago on OE. I can't remember the details but it initially all looked good but quickly turned to poop.

On the other hand I've used Fat32 for 'system' on pc's for years in OE and LE with no discernible issues.

**Iridium** · May 26, 2017 at 8:50 PM Official Post

Quote from trogggy

I tried using a fat32 storage partition a few years ago on OE. I can't remember the details but it initially all looked good but quickly turned to poop.

On the other hand I've used Fat32 for 'system' on pc's for years in OE and LE with no discernible issues.

I think if you use NTFS you shouldn't have any issues.

I don't have any Windows - except those I look out of.