SD card formatting error

tanasit · Feb 9, 2023

The V3 came with a Sandisk 32GB sd card in the drone but no SD in the Smart controller SE.
I bought a Samsung 256GB sd card but decided to put the 256GB into the drone and the 32GB in the controller.
Once I started to take the video, it asked me to format the new Samsung 256GB card. I clicked OK but I received the error, "Formating failed".
I then insert the Samsung 256GB card into my PC and format it using the NTFS format but later I found out that Autel use exFAT format so I converted the Samsung 256GB to exFAT.
Still the same error because the controller still asked me to format the card.

Any suggestion?

Thanks

P.S. I checked the 32GB card that came with the V3 and found several folders being used for Android, so I copied those folders onto the 256GB card to no avail.
I did try to reformat the card several times both quick and full format but that did NOT help.

surenmunoo · Feb 10, 2023

Is your SD card, the Samsung a U3? A slow SD card will not work. I use SanDisk Extreme 256G U3.

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tanasit · Feb 10, 2023

surenmunoo said:
Is your SD card, the Samsung a U3? A slow SD card will not work. I use SanDisk Extreme 256G U3.

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Buy your Extreme 256GB Micro SD Card SDXC UHS-I Action Camera GoPro Memory Card 4K U3 160Mbs A2 from SanDisk. Flash Trend is #1 Micro SD Card, 256GB Micro SDXC Australian Retailer!

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Yes it is U3 which is the same I use for my other drones including the DJI Mini 3 Pro and the Evo Nano +.
I even took the Samsung SD card from my DJI and tested it in the V3 but no go!!

surenmunoo · Feb 11, 2023

tanasit said:
Yes it is U3 which is the same I use for my other drones including the DJI Mini 3 Pro and the Evo Nano +.
I even took the Samsung SD card from my DJI and tested it in the V3 but no go!!

Maybe it's an issue with the drone not being able to read any SD Card. I change SD Cards between my Mavic and Evo all the time.

surenmunoo · Feb 11, 2023

Wait!!!, did you update your drone when you got it? Apparently the original FW had issues where the drone could not read the SD Card properly.

tanasit · Feb 12, 2023

surenmunoo said:
Wait!!!, did you update your drone when you got it? Apparently the original FW had issues where the drone could not read the SD Card properly.

No I did NOT because the RID issue which notified me that the new version will comply with RID and I am not sure if I should go ahead.
Some members suggested NOT to get involve with the RID just yet.

May be I should?

surenmunoo · Feb 13, 2023

tanasit said:
No I did NOT because the RID issue which notified me that the new version will comply with RID and I am not sure if I should go ahead.
Some members suggested NOT to get involve with the RID just yet.

May be I should?

Get it updated

tanasit · Feb 13, 2023

Will the update fix the SD format error?

surenmunoo · Feb 13, 2023

tanasit said:
Will the update fix the SD format error?

Not sure about your drone but it did for me when I first got mine hence I asked about the update.

tanasit · Feb 13, 2023

surenmunoo said:
Not sure about your drone but it did for me when I first got mine hence I asked about the update.

I just did the update for both Autel Explorer App and the V3 Firmware as per the video below using OTA (online Over-The-Air) which took about 1 hours.
However the sd card error still remains!
Since I want to use a larger capacity card (256GB vs stock 32GB) and I thought simply copy all the files from the stock SD card to the new larger SD card will do the trick. NOT SO!
Upon closer examination the stock SD card has some hidden files thus the total file size is BIGGER than the one's I copied to.
I the have to CLONE the stock SD to the new SD.
Note also that with Windows 10, if you format the SD card, you only have 2 choices: the NTFS or the new FAT32 aka exFAT. I checked the stcok SD and it's FAT32 format, so I had to use an APP called NTFS to FAT32 Wizard to covert the new SD NTFS to FAT32. The next step is to clone the SD cards using win32 disk imager.
The 2 steps above took about 30 minutes though.

Now all is good.

EVO Update Video

kjfrazi · Mar 2, 2023

I did all three updates and then put a 256gb SanDisk 256GB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I Memory Card with Adapter - Up to 190MB/s, C10, U3, V30, 4K, 5K, A2, Micro SD Card - SDSQXAV-256G-GN6MA from Amazon and I did not even have to format it. The drone immediately recognized and I had no issues. Have already flown twice and put appx. 60 gig of photos / video on the card. They were $25.99 from Amazon.