Skip to main content

Format & Flash the SD card

There are two ways to format the SD card:

A. Connect the SD card to your PC and choose one of the following options (1 or 2) to format it:​

After using the SD Card Formatter, your card should be fully formatted and ready to use without any further steps. The card will be fully allocated, resolving any previous issues with free space discrepancies. There’s no need to run diskpart commands after using the SD Card Formatter, as it will handle the reformatting process effectively.

image

Note:​

Sometimes, the microSD card may not be visible as a drive in 'This PC' or in Disk Management, especially after flashing the Jetson Nano image. This issue is likely due to the partitions created by the image, which are not recognized by Windows. In this case, you need to proceed with Option 2 so that the SD card can be recognized by Windows.

Option 2: Using 'diskpart' commands:​

Open the Command Prompt as an administrator, type diskpart, and press Enter.

C:\Windows\System32>diskpart

Select the disk:

DISKPART> select disk 1

List the disks:

DISKPART> list disk

Clean the Disk (This will remove all partitions):

DISKPART> clean

Create a New Partition:

DISKPART> create partition primary

Format the Partition:

DISKPART> format fs=exfat quick

Assign a Drive Letter:

DISKPART> assign letter=E
image

B. Flash the image via Balena Etcher App tool now.​

  • Launch the Balena Etcher App.
  • Select the image file you want to flash.
  • Choose the SD card as the target device.
  • Start the flashing process.
  • If a pop-up window appears asking "You need to format the disk to be able to use it," click "NO" to proceed without formatting.
image