The 64GB SDHC Memory Card

Yes, a 64GB SDHC Memory Card. SD standards limit the size of an SDHC card to 32GB. And you’ll never find a manufacturer that’ll make 64GB SDHC card. YES, all those 64GB Samsung SDHC cards are fake! But, in this post, I’ll show you how I magically turned my Samsung EVO Select 64GB SDXC memory card into a Samsung EVO Select 64GB SDHC memory card. Why?

A couple of reasons really. If you’ve read my review of the Zoom Hn1 recorder, you’ll know that I was really disappointed that it supported microSD, microSDHC cards, but not microSDXC cards. Which meant that the maximum storage I could have on the Zoom H1n recorder was 32GB. When recording in the broadcast quality 24bit/96kHz recording format – I wanted more memory. The other reason is, I do like to experiment and tinker. So, why not!

Anyway, before I share with you how I created a 64GB SDHC Memory Card, a few caveats.

Compatibility

Though I’ve got the 64GB SDHC Memory Card to work on my Zoom H1n, I’ve not been able to get it to work on any other of my digital recorders that only support microSDHC memory cards: Sony or Olympus. Theoretically, the 64GB SDHC Memory Card should work on these recorders, but it does not. I don’t know why (and if you have any suggestions, let me know), but I’ll keep on tinkering and try and find a workaround. However, the 64GB SDHC Memory Card works on my Android phone and my older Nikon DSLR (which only supports SDHC cards). Lesson learned: compatibility is unreliable and cannot be guaranteed.

Load Speeds

Just because you can create a 64GB SDHC Memory Card does not mean that it’s a good idea. There are very good reasons why the SD standard limits SDHC cards to 32GB – the size of the File Allocation Table? BTW, this is a great post on understanding SD cards, if you are interested. Using the 64GB SDHC Memory Card on my Zoom H1n, I did notice a significant increase in the time it took to load the SD card when I powered the recorder.

Now, the Zoom H1n is not known for its fast load times – it takes about 10 seconds to come on (the Sony ICD-ux560 takes less than a second). Testing the 64GB versus the 32GB microSD card load speeds on the H1n, I found that it took about 5 seconds more to load the 64GB card. Are the longer loading times caused by the doubling of the FAT size (to 15MB)? Probably. Lesson learned: the larger 64GB SD card lead to slower loading times; if you want your Zoom H1n to load faster – use a smaller memory SD card. Here’s a post on the best microSD card for Zoom H1n.

With that out of the way, let me show you how to create a 64GB SDHC memory card. It’s actually a very easy process, all you need to do is to format the SD card using the FAT32 file system! But this was a total nightmare on my Windows 10 machine (the first time I did it, I had to look for a Windows 7 machine), until I found a very cool program that made the formatting a breeze!

Creating a 64GB SDHC Memory Card

Step 1: Get a 64GB SDXC Memory Card

You can’t create a 64GB SDHC card from anything other than a 64GB SDXC card. So head over to Amazon and get a 64GB SDXC. I got the Samsung EVO Select 64GB SDXC.

Step 2: Download FAT32 GuiFormat

First, head over to the FAT32 guiformat software site. Once you’re on the site, click on the picture to start your download. Since it’s a portable version, that needs no installation, I recommend that you save it to your desktop.

Step 3: Connect the 64GB SDXC to your computer

If your PC or Laptop has a microSD slot, you are in luck. Directly plug the 64GB microSDXC into your computer. If not, use a USB microSD card reader to connect the microSD to your laptop.

Step 4: Format the 64GB microSDXC Card

First, make sure that you CLOSE all Window Explorer windows. The formatting will not work if any Window Explore window is open. Then, double click on the guiformat software to run it. In the format window that loads, select the drive you want to format. Please make sure it reads 64G exFAT – you don’t want to inadvertently format any of your other drives! Finally, choose the default 32768 as your allocation unit size. And you may optionally name your drive in the volume label field. Using quick format, it takes a few seconds to format the drive. And you are done.

And here’s the result: I can record 30+ hours of 24bit/96kHz broadcast quality audio on my Zoom H1n.

That’s it for this post. Hope you’ve found it useful. If you have any suggestions, comments or questions, feel free to post them in the comment section below. And keep us mind for all of your qualitative interview transcription needs.