I have an SD card in my Pan Cam v3. When I manage the card, it shows 13.95G/14.49G. When I click on Format, the button changes to “Formatting”. A minute or two later, it seems to be done formatting, but the usage on the card has not changed.
Why?
Sounds like a bad card, but take it out, put it in a computer, and format it to FAT32.
A 16G card is very small especially if using continuous recording. It may just have reached the end of its life, or have been a bad/counterfeit card to begin with.
A couple more thoughts. When formatting in a computer make sure to do a Full format and Not a Quick format.
I also would recommend using High Endurance SD cards. My oldest 32GB card is 3 years old and still reliably recording Continuously today. I do have a new replacement SD card on my shelf ready to be put in service when the time comes.
If I have a new card that has passed the validation tool by the respective manufacturer, I just use the quick format in SD card formatter, that’s plenty to ensure the file system, offsets, etc are all correct.
If a bad or fake card is suspected then the full overwrite format is in order, obviously it takes quite a while (not too bad for a 16G card though) but it effectively confirms nearly every memory cell in the card, with the exception of the spares they build in to take over when one goes bad.
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Is it really a 16gb SD card? Or are there partitions that the camera can’t use?
A 16gb is probably too small. Get a 32gb card.
If this is an old SD card and there are other partitions, use a utility to erase the card first before formatting on a PC.
The OP can check partitions on the SD card using Windows DiskPart from the command line. Pretty powerful tool so be careful not to delete your Windows OS partition.
I believe the SD formatter utilitiy will remove all partitions and restore the card to “new” state, though it has been a long time since I’ve had to partition (and then restore) an SD card.
I’m so used to using diskpart for other things that sometimes I forget just how clunky and nonsensical the interface is. So I second the notion of being extremely careful, double checking what you’ve “selected” before doing any sort of command to delete or change things.
Note you can also search for “disk management” in windows and that gives you a more graphical interface, though it does still require some knowledge (and is not quite as powerful as diskpart, but for simple adding/removing partitions it should do the trick).
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