Formatting microSD card on Raspberry Pi

Hello,

I recently bought a Raspberry Pi 4B and was curious as to how RISC OS works, so I installed it on the microSD card provided with the Raspberry Pi. The time came when I wanted to format the microSD card, however with RISC OS using a file system that Windows or Linux cannot detect, I am left with a “No media” error on both partitions used for the Raspberry Pi to boot. The microSD card does work fine as RISC OS is able to boot and function without any errors.

Is there any way I can format the microSD card for it to become detected by Windows or Linux? I would prefer not to end up buying a new microSD card because of this.

Many thanks,
Sam Rose

You can either have the card formatted for a RISC OS boot (which means a FAT and a filecore partition) or for Windows use (FAT partition). Use SD formatter under Windows with size adjustment on to reformat the SD card but then you would not be able to use it under RISC OS.

Hi,

That’s my issue – neither partition is showing as FAT on Windows or Linux after I installed RISC OS. Both partitions are showing on Windows as having drive letters attached to them, but 0B No Media on both what should be the FAT and FileCore partitions, which is very strange, given that with what you’ve said about RISC OS partitions. This means that I can’t access either of the two partitions through Windows (File Explorer, Disk Management, DiskPart, SDA SD Card Formatter, Raspberry Pi Imager, various partition manager software) or through Linux via fdisk.

Is there anything else you can suggest?

Just checked the microSD card in a microSD card to SD card adapter which then plugged into my Windows computer via a USB adapter, it seems there might have actually been an issue with trying to use just the microSD card in the USB adapter. I was able to access the microSD card now to format it. Apologies for wasting people’s time here, I should have checked a full-size SD card when I started having issues like this.

RISC OS is amazing and has a great community from looking at the forums, and I will definitely continue monitoring its development as I love the history of Acorn Computers and seeing RISC OS Open continue developing the OS is such good news!