4g SD Cards

[JMK]

Has anyone tried the new 4G SD cards in the FZ30 or FZ5 ????

[genece]

There would be no point the camera uses FAT16 and that has a 2 gb limit.

[JMK]

Ah, that makes sense.

I was wondering why nobody mentions them in the forums.

[Alex D]

There would be no point the camera uses FAT16 and that has a 2 gb limit.

Sorry, but WRONG !!! FAT16 has a 1GB card size limit. No use getting a card larger than 1GB

[Battscrew]

I have been reading recently that a lot of fourm members have been using a 2gb card with no issues.

[genece]

Sorry, but WRONG !!! FAT16 has a 1GB card size limit. No use getting a card larger than 1GB

Your info on fat 16 is incorrect

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/partSizes-c.html

[Alex D]

All LUMIX cams with FAT16 format are limited to 1GB per LUMIX cam owner manuals and I just read in the FZ5 review on DPreview that FAT 16 is limited to 1GB ... who's right??

Here is the quote from dpReview of the FZ5 in the section "Body Elements":

"Images are stored on SD or MMC cards - a rather measly 16MB SD is supplied to get you started (well, as much of a start as 5 fine quality pictures at full resolution can be). The FZ5 only supports FAT16 formatted cards, meaning the biggest card you can use is 1GB."

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz5/page2.asp

[genece]

Do as you wish but I am using 2gb cards in 3 FZ cameras.....And they said the FZ10 could only use 256mb.
Here is what MS says about FAT 16.

Maximum Partition Size Using FAT16 File System
View products that this article applies to.
Article ID : 118335
Last Review : December 16, 2004
Revision : 3.2
This article was previously published under Q118335
SUMMARY
Microsoft MS-DOS versions 4.0 and later allow FDISK to partition hard disks up to 4 gigabytes (GB) in size. However, the MS-DOS file allocation table (FAT) file system can support only 2 GB per partition. Because of this fact, a hard disk between 2 and 4 GB in size must be broken down into multiple partitions, each of which does not exceed 2 GB.

NOTE: Windows 95 OEM Service Release version 2 and later support drives larger than 2 GB using the FAT32 file system. For more information about the FAT32 file system, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID: 154997 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154997/EN-US/)
TITLE : Description of the FAT32 File System
MORE INFORMATION
The 2-GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters and the largest cluster size supported by the FAT file system. The FAT file system is limited to 65,525 clusters. The size of a cluster must be a power of 2 and less than 65,536 bytes--this results in a maximum cluster size of 32,768 bytes (32K). Multiplying the maximum number of clusters (65,525) by the maximum cluster size (32,768) equals 2 GB.

Note that the hard disk drive must be supported by the computer's ROM BIOS APIs, which have a 1024-cylinder limitation, in order for FDISK to partition the hard disk.

Because 32K per cluster can waste valuable hard disk space, the FAT file system is not always the best hard disk management scheme. Microsoft Windows NT uses the NT File System (NTFS), which uses a different file/cluster scheme. Microsoft OS/2 version 1.3 offered HPFS, which also uses a more conservative method of allocating disk resources.

NOTE: Microsoft Windows NT also supports FAT drives. Windows NT 3.51 supports FAT drives up to 4 GB in size. FAT drives from 2 GB to 4 GB in size are not supported by MS-DOS or Windows. In other words, if you wish to have a FAT drive accessible from MS-DOS or Windows 95/98 and Windows NT, your FAT drive should be no larger than 2 GB. If you will be accessing the FAT drive from only Windows NT, then the drive can be 2 GB to 4 GB in size.

For additional information about MS-DOS and Windows drive size and partition limits, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID: 67321

All LUMIX cams with FAT16 format are limited to 1GB per LUMIX cam owner manuals and I just read in the FZ5 review on DPreview that FAT 16 is limited to 1GB ... who's right??

Here is the quote from dpReview of the FZ5 in the section "Body Elements":

"Images are stored on SD or MMC cards - a rather measly 16MB SD is supplied to get you started (well, as much of a start as 5 fine quality pictures at full resolution can be). The FZ5 only supports FAT16 formatted cards, meaning the biggest card you can use is 1GB."

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz5/page2.asp

[Mike63]

I would be willing to bet that the manual lists the largest card available at the time it was written.

[relax]

Has anyone had any luck using a 2GB card with the FZ5? I spoke to a rep at panasonic who said I can't use anything larger than a 1GB, but it sounds like he might have outdated info...I hope.