If you plan to store a lot of information on your raspberry pi you may be wondering if there is a limit to what size you can have. It’s a great question because you don’t want to buy an expensive micro SD card and not be able to use it.

1. Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Micro Sd Slot Cards
2. Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Micro Sd Slot Machine

Now that the Old Raspberry Pi Model B SD Card is up to date and the New 128mb MicroSD card are ready we are ready to put it all together. Insert the 128mb Micro SD into the Model B+ On the underside of the Raspberry Pi(See Image) - Make sure to click it in place. The B+ is an improvement over the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, increasing the speed of the processor to 1.4GHz, adding support for wireless ac Wi-Fi, for Bluetooth 4.2, for faster Ethernet, and Power. Raspberry Pi Model B+ with 4 USB Ports, a micro SD Slot, and More GPIOs Coming Soon With over 3 million boards sold, the Raspberry Pi is by far the most popular ARM Linux board on the market, but people are often asking for hardware upgrades with a faster processor, more RAM and so on. Also, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B has built-in wifi, where the older models will require a wifi dongle. A typical Raspberry Pi shopping list, assuming you have a mouse, keyboard, and HDMI monitor that you can use temporarily while setting up is: Raspberry Pi - $37; 1000mA+ mini usb power supply - $10; 16 GB micro SD card - $10.

In short, The largest supported micro SD card for the raspberry pi is 32 GB by default but higher sized cards can be formatted from exFAT to FAT32 to work with the raspberry pi.

How To Format Higher Capacity Micro SD Cards

Currently there is no limit to the SD card size. It isn’t really an issue of the pi being able to handle a larger size. It’s a formatting issue. Cards over the size of 32GB have to be formatted for them to work on the raspberry pi. It sucks but its not the end of the world.

You can format an SD card in a few ways. We are going to go over a few options so you have all the tools you need to get the most storage out of your device.

You will need to do this on a mac, PC, or Linux, not on a raspberry pi that still doesn’t have any memory. This software converts SD & SDHC & SDXC which cover the full spectrum of SD and Micro SD cards. We go over the difference of these later in the article.

Formatting on windows

1. Download the file based on your operating system
2. Accept the terms
3. Install to your desired drive
4. Select the card you want to format
5. Select the quick format option
6. Click format

Once fully formatted your raspberry pi will be able to detect and accept the newly formatted micro SD card. If you’re having any issues drop a comment.

Formatting on Mac

The process is a bit different for the mac. On a Mac you will need to go to your disc utility and click on erase. This will erase the existing exFAT partition allowing you to create a FAT32 primary partition. Your space will not go down to 32GB this is just the name of the partition.

Formatting on Linux

Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Micro Sd Slot Cards

This is my least favorite method as you will need to open terminal and if you’re not used to coding this could be intimidating but for those who are up for a challenge watch the video bellow. The instructor us using Ubuntu.

What are the differences between micro SD, , micro SDHC and micro SDXC cards?

The major difference between a micro SD, micro SDHC, and micro SDXC are the storage capacity. SD stands for “Secure Digital”, SDHC stands for “Secure Digital High Capacity Card”, and SDXC stands for “Secure Digital Extended Capacity Card”.

Anything over 32GB is most likely going to be an SDXC card and will need to be formatted. The raspberry pi only supports the Fat16 and Fat32 file systems. Larger cards are going to be in the exFAT format. Each type of card has a capacity limit. SD cards have a capacity of 2GB. SDHC has a capacity of 4GB to 32GB. SDXC cards have a capacity of 64GB and 2TB.

The speed of the card is dictated by the class. I wrote an article on how long can your raspberry pi last and toward the bottom I went over the top SD cards with a class 10 speed.

Class 10 SD cards have a higher read and write speed and sometimes come with wear leveling which extends the life of your SD card. These are the standard currently. If your planning on storing 8k video you will need a class V60 or V90 (NEW) and the pi will not handle it well.

The higher you go in storage capacity the more expensive it will be. Many people swear by 32GB SD cards since they don’t need any additional formatting and can already store quite a bit of information.

But for those who are looking to do more, you can definitely upgrade to more space quite easily. Just be sure to bookmark this guide so you don’t get stuck with a card you can’t use with your device.

Is there a way to recover files from a formatted SD card?

You can easily recover data with various 3rd party recovery software. Data is not entirely lost during the formatting process. It just isn’t accessible to the naked eye. When you format your SD card you’re telling it that all of the files that were on it previously are allowed to be overwritten by the new data. So it’s still there but once more space is used it will be in the queue to be overwritten and lost forever.

Now there aren’t any pre-installed utility programs you can use to restore your files but there is software you can download to help in the recovery process. I included a list of recovery solutions that come with a free trial so you can test them out.

Here is a chart of 3 data recovery solutions you can use to recover lost data.

Recuva is clearly the cheaper option and comes from the creators of commonly recognized CCleaner. You just don’t get the bells and whistles the other two software have like previewing the file before recovering it or data imaging.

If you lost some really important files you may want to just upgrade to the more expensive options. Especially if you own your own business. You will need all of the additional features you can get. They also include technical support which is something I wish I had growing up in the 2000’s.

Related Questions

Will I lose my files if I reformat a micro SD card?

Yes, all files will be lost if you plan on formatting a micro SD card. You can also recover them using various recovery tools found online such as recuva, stellar, and eraseUS.

What’s the best SD card for the raspberry pi 3?

The best SD card for the raspberry pi is the sandisk 32GB class 10 micro SD card with wear leveling. Sandisk has a great reputation for providing high-quality SD cards at a reasonable price.

You can also purchase micro SD cards with Noobs already pre installed. NOOBS(New out of the box software) is a tool that allows you to easily select operating systems for your raspberry pi. It’s great for beginners and there are sellers on amazon that are selling it pre loaded on SD cards.

SD cards can also be found in raspberry pi bundles. Before buying a new a micro SD card see if the bundle you purchased already came with one. Its small so it may be hard to miss.

Is there a way to fix a corrupted micro SD card??

First be sure to check and see if it’s just a compatibility issue. If the card has worked in the past then you may want to explore other options such as reinstalling drivers, re-formatting, or using built in solutions such as the one from sandisk.

Still having issues? Leave a comment bellow and we will get it sorted out for you in no time. Yes we reply to comments.

In this post, we will learn How to setup Raspberry Pi 3 Model-B for Programming. As we have seen an Introduction of Raspberry Pi 3 in the previous post. Let’s get a jump start onto preparing SD Card and boot raspberry pi for first time. Now if we have new Raspberry Pi 3 then we have two choices by which we can boot. The first way is using HDMI Monitor which is easy but often time we won’t be having a monitor at our disposal. The second way is referred as headless setup in which we will connect Raspberry Pi 3 to internet router to get IP Address to access Pi over SSH Client. The one thing we need to have before we proceed any further. We must have Micro SD Card with latest Raspbian OS image. Now the question is How to prepare SD Card for Raspbian OS? So let’s make our SD Card bootable.

List of Software need to Installed

• 7Zip Program: To extract downloaded Raspbian OS Image
• SDFormatter: To format SD Card to begin initial setup process
• Win32DiskImager: To load OS Image Raspbian onto SD Card
• Advanced IP Scanner: To get IP address of Raspberry Pi
• PuTTY Client: SSH Client to access Raspberry Pi on windows

List of Components and Parts Required

• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Kit
• Micro USB Cable
• Micro SD Card and SD Card Adapter
• LAN Cable
• HDMI Monitor, USB Keyboard and Mouse (optional)

Prepare SD Card: Setup Raspbian on Raspberry Pi 3

The first step to bring Raspberry Pi 3 in action is to download the latest version of Raspbian OS Image from an official web page. As shown in the picture below, we have to download a zip file and extract using 7Zip Program.

Next step is to format Micro SD Card using SDFormatter. It’s pretty simple. We recommend you to do fully format go to Options à choose Full Erase. The fully formatted Micro SD Card is ready to load Raspbian on it.

Next step is to Open up Win32DiskImager. In Win32DiskImager, we will have to browse Raspbian image and select destination drive where our SD Card is attached. Once you’re sure about the path of OS image and destination drive, then simply hit “write” button. This will take for a while to write the image onto Micro SD Card.

When process completes we will see popup box saying “write successful! Ok“. We can observe that our untitled SD Card will be referred as “boot”. This assures that our SD Card is ready. Now browse SD Card so that we can create file using notepad. Make sure to Save this newly created file with name as “ssh” (without any extension).

This file enables SSH access for Raspberry Pi 3 Model-B. In previous version of Raspberry Pi we need not have to do this. But later on Raspberry Pi foundation realized that many people are unaware about this file. So user won’t be accidentally exposed. Ultimately this provides a security check.

Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Micro Sd Slot Machine

The next step is to remove Micro SD Card from Adaptor to put onto Raspberry Pi 3. To do this we recommend you to give some respect to SD Card by safely remove hardware on a windows machine.

At this point, our Micro SD Card is ready to insert into Raspberry Pi 3 (Micro SD Card Slot on the backside of Pi). Now simply insert SD Card into Pi 3. Also, connect LAN Cable between Internet Router and RJ45 Ethernet Slot of Raspberry Pi. The only thing left at this point to connect Micro USB Cable to power-up Rapberry Pi 3. So power-up Pi and observe the status of onboard leds. If everything goes fine up to this point then we will get Red LED light up and Green LED will be blinking in an interval.

We can open a browser and enter 192.168.1.1 to access router settings. The popup box will ask you to provide username and password, make sure to enter both as admin. In Router settings, you will find DHCP listing. From there we have to note the IP address assigned to Raspberry Pi3. You can also use Advance IP Scanner to get IP Address of Pi.

Here at this point we are ready to put Raspberry Pi into action. Now open PuTTY and enter Host Name or IP Address of Raspberry Pi in my case it’s a 192.168.1.8 and hit open button.

We will be presented with screen. This time we have to enter Login as: pi and Password: raspberry. And we are done with setup of Raspberry Pi 3 and initial boot process.

Live Demo: How to setup Raspberry Pi 3 Model-B

This is it for How to setup Raspberry Pi 3 Model-B for Programming. We hope this post will help you drive Raspberry pi 3 into action. In next tutorial we will see how to setup Wi-Fi network on raspberry Pi 3. If you still have any questions feel free to leave a comment. Thanks for reading.