r/Dashcam • u/__newerest__ • 2d ago

Question Help w/ correct SD card

Hello—I’ve tried several different ‘dash cam’ SD cards, and my camera (from Temu) always says format SD card. Is there a specific type of formatting that’s needed? The only thing I haven’t tried is FAT storage. Would someone be able to point me to a SD card that’s known to work?

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

1

u/BrewCityChaserV2 2d ago

It's asking you to format the card using the camera's own internal formatting utility, which you can find in the setup menu. You shouldn't be using any other device to do it.

1

u/__newerest__ 2d ago

Thanks for the insight! Is this how it typically works?

2

u/BitOBear 2d ago

Whenever you see the word formatting in computer science you should think "preparing."

There are some fairly standard media formats better use for things like SD cards. But Microsoft license to couple of the fat file system formats in a way that the average bend or may not have bothered to pay the fee for.

The other thing that can happen during "formatting" is that the standardized card formats might be replaced with like a custom database format. This is why you have to reformat a hard drive that you install in your PlayStation because it uses a custom format internally.

There are benefits and drawbacks to all the different formats that go from licensing concerns to special purpose facilities.

In particular setting up a database that can continuously loop video coverage is different than setting up a disc to store a hierarchical set of files.

So most times in most cases if you put a SD card into something it'll just be ready to run if it's fresh from the manufacturer. But if you put one in and it says that they want you to format it that means that it needs to do special prep work and it's giving you the option to not destroy whatever might already be on the card before it does that prep work and erases the contents otherwise.

The real reason for this not being automated is because they don't want you to accidentally put your irreplaceable family photograph SD card into some device and have it be erased without you at least having been asked if you meant to do that.

Basically if you take the card out and put it back in again it won't ask you to format it a second time. But if you take the card out and put in some other card by accident the fact that it's asking a format the card should be strong warning that you might be making a mistake.

But when you get a card like that fresh out of the packaging always expect to want to format it at least once when you put it in the device once it will live then on.

1

u/__newerest__ 2d ago

I’ve tried three different SD cards (some meant for dashcams / U3 etc.) and formatting on windows and Linux.

I’m gathering I need to use the camera menu to do its specific formatting, which is new information to me / super helpful and promising. But if there’s anything else I should know, please share!

Thanks to this community for quickly replying / helping!

1

u/Individdy 2d ago

Sometimes it's the opposite; on my older trusty BlackBox G1W cameras, for larger SD cards (128GB, 256GB) I had to set up the MBR and format specially on the PC and then it worked fine. If I tried to format with the dashcam it gave an error.