Idaho Airships, Inc.

If your camera requires that your CF Memory Cards be formatted in FAT32 (Canon 5D, 1DsMII, 1DMIII, Nikon D2X, et. al.), and you format a 12GB or 16GB card in the camera, the card will transmogrify into an 8GB card.

FAT (File Allocation Tables) is a legacy file system from Microsoft. The friendliest description of FAT32, the eventuality of the FAT system, is on Seagate’s website: FAT32 Basics.

In short, your FAT32 camera will modify the Memory Card’s Partition Table (Partitions are logical divisions of storage resources) and the card will then be an 8GB card…functionally. In the absence of any failure, it’s still fully capable of its design capacity and function-you won’t lose any files if you shoot with the device, you simply won’t be able to access the truncated storage resources until you resolve the situation by downloading Hewlett-Packard’s USB Drive Format Utility and reformatting the Card.

HP’s identification of the USB Disk Storage Format Tool file is SP27608.exe, and the easiest way to acquire it is at PC World’s site, here.

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