Help Struggling to format memory card as exFAT

[King Mustard]

I have a Lenovo TAB 2 A10-70F (2015) tablet that runs Android 6.0.

I have a new 32 GB microSD card.

When I inserted the card into the tablet, Android asked me to format it, which I accepted.

When I connect the tablet to my Windows 10 PC and try to transfer 5 GB video files onto the memory card, it fails (no error message, just an error sound).

I presume it's because Android formatted the memory card as FAT32?

So I connected the memory card to my PC manually and formatted it to exFAT using Windows' built-in format tool but when I reinsert it back into the tablet, Android says it's corrupted and needs formatting.

Any ideas?

 

[psionandy]

Did it give you the option to format it as internal storage or portable storage?

 

[King Mustard]

Did it give you the option to format it as internal storage or portable storage?

It did.

I definitely want it used as portable storage.

 

[mikedt]

Sounds like the tablet isn't recognising exFAT formatted cards. Although being Android 6.x it should. May have to check with Lenovo support about it, if nobody else has any ideas?

I presume the SD is good and genuine. Suggest you check it with SD Insight, just to be sure it's not a fake. Knockoff SDs can cause all sorts of strange things to happen.

 

[touringhaggis]

Hi,

Assuming that there is no fault with the hardware (as mentioned above), I would guess that the Android kernel installed on the phone does not support exFAT. If this is the official ROM from Lenovo then it could well be that they didn't license the technology (as I read somewhere else may be the case). In which case you would need to install a custom ROM with this support enabled. All that said, I just read this after a quick bit of research and cannot confirm that the support is not present.

Regards,
Eric.

 

[mikedt]

That sounds like it could be a reason, software patents bite again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Restrictive_licensing_and_software_patents

FWIW I've found Oppo phones support exFAT formatted storage no problems, and the 128GB micro-SD I'm using at the moment is exFAT. However I did find that the Oppo phones themselves couldn't format as exFAT, I've used a Mac to do it, with Disk Utility. And presumably both Oppo and Apple have licensed exFAT from Microsoft. I did have a Samsung Note7 for a few weeks last year, but can't confirm if that supported exFAT or not.

EDIT:

It looks like exFAT is NOT supported on Lenovo tablets...
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Android-Yoga-Series-Tablets/exFat-SD-not-supported/td-p/2243316

 

[mikedt]

For information I've come across another device where exFAT isn't supported, an Onda oBook 20plus tablet. This is an Intel Atom dual-OS, Android and Windows device. When booted into Win 10 that supports exFAT no problems of course, but its Android 5.11 OS does not recognise an exFAT micro-SD, it states it's blank and offers to format it.