UPDATE: OK, so in response to the suggestions below, I formatted to exFAT. Transferred a movie on to it. Put it in the tablet. Guess what? It won't read it. Says the card is blank and needs to be formatted. So I guess the tablet won't read exFAT-formatted cards. Any other suggestions?
By the way, this is the tablet I'm working with: phonearena.com/phones/Verizon-Wireless-Ellipsis-7_id8207
Like I said, it's very basic.
First off, please don't tell me to reformat my drive to NTFS. LOL
I have a very basic tablet that will hold an external microSD card up to 32GB. Obviously, in today’s world, that doesn’t mean much. I bought a 256GB microSD to put in there but found it won’t work unless it’s formatted to FAT32. OK, done. However, as you know, you can’t transfer anything to it over 4GB – a problem if I want to transfer movies and the like! I tried reformatting to NTFS, but then of course the tablet wouldn’t read the card.
Is there a workaround to this so I can transfer large files onto the card – and still have my tablet be able to read them? The tablet itself only has 8GB of storage on it, most of which is filled by the o/s and apps already; there’s less than 1GB free. I'd really like to be able to travel with my tablet and watch movies, but I'm kinda stuck.
The above is about the extent of my knowledge with this stuff. If there IS a workaround, could you please “dumb it down” for me so I can easily do it? 😉
Help?
Thanx,
Jamie
Best Answer
Android tablets only support FAT and FAT32 out of the box. There's also a chance that some ext* filesystem would work, but Windows doesn't support these.
Some Android devices can be flashed with modified firmware that supports NTFS, exFAT and more, but flashing such firmware requires advanced knowledge about Android devices and invalidates your warranty (with rare exceptions). It also involves risk of making the device unusable.
All in all, you're out of luck if you want to store files larger than 4 GB
However, maybe you don't need epic-quality FullHD movies on your tablet? It has just a 1280x800px screen anyway, so 1280x720 should be good enough. You can get really good quality under 4 gigs with this resolution. You can compress your movies to be under 4 GB on your PC, then copy them to standard FAT32-formatted SD card.