I've purchased a lovely new (and tiny!) A1 microSD card for the Air.
Do I need to format it before using in the Air?
What's the best format to use? FAT32?

you have the option to format the SD card in the app itself, once you connect to the MA.

cyborg Posted at 2018-2-8 20:13
you have the option to format the SD card in the app itself, once you connect to the MA.

Thanks. Where in the app do I do that?

ajbezark Posted at 2018-2-8 21:00
Thanks. Where in the app do I do that?

I don't have the MA with me, so can't screenshot. But this video should help

Hi, there. Please follow the advice above and you can format the SD card by entering the camera setting. It is similar to Mavic pro. Please inform us if you need help. Thanks for your support.

DJI Elektra Posted at 2018-2-9 01:08
Hi, there. Please follow the advice above and you can format the SD card by entering the camera setting. It is similar to Mavic pro. Please inform us if you need help. Thanks for your support.

Great! Thanks, all.

cyborg Posted at 2018-2-8 20:13
you have the option to format the SD card in the app itself, once you connect to the MA.

From his question he knows that. I think he is asking if there is another way like on his PC/Mac

Use the Mavic air to format the SD card, The option is in the DJI GO camera settings menu

I've owned cameras for decades, and I usually try to format and name my memory cards on my PC or Mac. The reason being, sometimes, when you initially format memory cards on a device, they have a hard time being seen on a Mac or PC when you plug them in. Is there a particular format that the Mavic Air prefers?  FAT32? exFAT? NTFS? Some other format?

Amarand Posted at 2018-2-10 14:55
I've owned cameras for decades, and I usually try to format and name my memory cards on my PC or Mac. The reason being, sometimes, when you initially format memory cards on a device, they have a hard time being seen on a Mac or PC when you plug them in. Is there a particular format that the Mavic Air prefers?  FAT32? exFAT? NTFS? Some other format?

Mavic Air formats the cards to exFAT, so I suppose that's the preferred format

CarloUK Posted at 2018-2-10 12:02
From his question he knows that. I think he is asking if there is another way like on his PC/Mac

if you would've read the very next post you can see that he didn't know it.  as long as it's in exFAT format it should be ok, shouldn't matter what device/OS was used to format

Yes i would like to format on my mac after importing. Saves powering the drone and RC up just to reformat. Loosing valuable battery power

cyborg Posted at 2018-2-10 17:34
Mavic Air formats the cards to exFAT, so I suppose that's the preferred format

Thank you for this information.  I strongly prefer to format my cards in my desktop computer to avoid the "card not formatted" error that frequently occurs with device-formatted cards.  I have a drawer with hundreds of sad little cards of various sizes and shapes, going wa-a-a-ay back and I've formatted all of them on my PC/Mac without any issues.  Hopefully I can say the same with the Mavic Air.

When I format my 32gb sandisk extreme plus, it formats it as fat32 and cannot be read on my mac!

lucas1 Posted at 2018-2-24 18:16
When I format my 32gb sandisk extreme plus, it formats it as fat32 and cannot be read on my mac!

I had the same issue with the 128GB SD card not readable on both Mac and Windows after formatting in the DJI Go App.
Here's the process I used to fix it - recovering my data and reformating the SD card from the Mac OSX.

Backup:
1. Plugin Mavic Air to computer via USB-C cable
2. Find the DCIM folder with the images/video
3. Copy the media data to local computer disk
4. Eject the disks (safely remove)
5. Unplug the drone from the computer

Reformat SD card on computer:
1. Take out the SD card from the head of the drone
2. Plug it into the computer via the card adapter.
3. Format the disk in OSX  "Disk Utility" > "Erase"
4. Important: choose file system type of "ExFat"
5. Give the SD card a label, like "MavicAirSD1"
6. Done!

After this, the card was readable in all my devices.

Right but then when you format in the drone it won’t read on my iMac.

Right but then when you format in the drone it won’t read on my iMac.

FORMATTING MICRO SD CARD

fans589cba4b Posted at 2018-6-12 04:31
Right but then when you format in the drone it won’t read on my iMac.

I've heard of people having this problem, but I am unable to recreate the problem on mine.  When i format the SD card in the Mavic Air, and then remove and put it in my Macbook Pro, I don't have any problems.  I can also take that SD card and put it in any one of my Windows machines.  

I hope you can get it sorted out so you can work with your SD.

The specs do say "Supported File System: FAT32"

However fat32 comes with huge, huge drawbacks, for example the size one file can reach is a mere 4GB (if even). exFat would make a lot more sense.
Edit: This makes me doubt if the writespeed should be 100megabits or 100 megabytes! Sure, one is more likely than the other since I don't even know if theres a card for 100 MBytes... but still.

Whatever SD  card you select, FAT 32 shall limit your filesize to 4Gb which could be a problem for long 4k videos so ExFat is preferred for such requirements as lengthy 4k filming.

Just be careful where you purchase your SD cards though, as the cheapest is not always a wise choice Fake SD cards . Typical errors are the 'Slow SD Card' message.

GB (with a large 'B') is conventionally referring to Giga-Bytes but Gb (small b) is Giga bits. A Byte is  (16 aarg) 8 bits.

If you put an unformatted card in the MA it will tell you to format it and should take you to format in the go app atleast that what happened when I first used my MA a year ago.

Boffin Posted at 12-10 00:06
Whatever SD  card you select, FAT 32 shall limit your filesize to 4Gb which could be a problem for long 4k videos so ExFat is preferred for such requirements as lengthy 4k filming.

Just be careful where you purchase your SD cards though, as the cheapest is not always a wise choice Fake SD cards . Typical errors are the 'Slow SD Card' message.

Generally the rule of uppercase and lowercase B-Letters is true, however not everyone applies to these rules. Another good rule is: Stuff for internal transfer is often given in bytes, information on network transfer is often given in bytes.

I do believe that 1 byte is 8 bit tho, not 16.

Wannger88 Posted at 12-11 23:14
Generally the rule of uppercase and lowercase B-Letters is true, however not everyone applies to these rules. Another good rule is: Stuff for internal transfer is often given in bytes, information on network transfer is often given in bytes.

I do believe that 1 byte is 8 bit tho, not 16.

You are perfectly correct Wannger88. I was thinking in hexadecimal - Too much low level code writing - I must 'assemble' my thoughts (I fixed the original- thanks)  

Boffin Posted at 12-10 00:06
Whatever SD  card you select, FAT 32 shall limit your filesize to 4Gb which could be a problem for long 4k videos so ExFat is preferred for such requirements as lengthy 4k filming.

Just be careful where you purchase your SD cards though, as the cheapest is not always a wise choice Fake SD cards . Typical errors are the 'Slow SD Card' message.

The 4GB file size limit of FAT32 isn't a major concern as the Mavic will just split your recording over multiple files.  Of course that does mean you have more than one file to deal with, but you don't lose anything - there's no break in recording between files (not even a dropped frame).  Yes, other file systems may be better for avoiding this situation, but if your PC/Mac is going to struggle to read anything else but FAT32 then don't worry about it.

Neil

Boffin Posted at 12-11 23:33
You are perfectly correct Wannger88. I was thinking in hexadecimal - Too much low level code writing - I must 'assemble' my thoughts (I fixed the original- thanks)

Hehe no worries. I f-ed up as well, mentioning "bytes" twice.

Correction: Bytes for internal, bits for external (network) transfer.

Potentially offtopic: I noted sometimes very minor framedrops in recording eventho I have a recommended SD card with plents of speed. Might trying out to format it to exfat.

Maybe it was also just my PC (where I have it on HDD not SDD) not being able to handle so much data at once.

Does it matter to even matter to format? What are the benefits of actually formatting it properly?

AntDX316 Posted at 4-18 04:49
Does it matter to even matter to format? What are the benefits of actually formatting it properly?

It basically clears the card and resets it to zero. If you have say a 32GB micro SD and on your previous flights used up 25GB with footage and stills and don't format, that card will now have only 7GB of storage space remaining which may not be enough for your next set of flights.

Always best practice to remove the card as soon as you get home from flying and import all of the files into your computer then put the card back in the drone and before you take off on your next flight simply format it in the drone which takes literally a few seconds then you'll have the whole storage space to work with and won't be in a position where you can no longer record to the sd card mid flight.

AntDX316 Posted at 4-18 04:49
Does it matter to even matter to format? What are the benefits of actually formatting it properly?

Formatting the card regulatly is better than just deleting the pirctures as it help prevent file fragmentation. ( faster write )

https://www.digitalcameraworld.c ... ormat-a-memory-card

fans589cba4b Posted at 2018-6-12 04:31
Right but then when you format in the drone it won’t read on my iMac.

I format mine for both my mavic air and mavic pro through the DJI go app and my imac reads them just fine. I use iphoto and imovie.

yeah but the card was Empty, 32GB Class-3 card and it says format recommended but I'm asking about the format type as I think it's wrong because I formatted it on the PC with default format when it was 16