MP3 player says "Flash Error, To Format" after reformatting it on a Mac

Question

I currently have 2 MP3 players

I had formatted my MP3 player to MS-DOS(FAT32), the other one is MS-DOS(FAT32) as well, but that one hasn't been formatted. I tried uploading a song to it, and when I turn on the formatted MP3 player, it says "Flash Error, To Format". I even tried copying and pasting the files from the working MP3 player to the formatted one, but it didn't work.

Answer 1

If the MP3 player has 2 GB of storage capacity or less, it's likely that it is designed to use FAT16 instead of FAT32. Try formatting it as FAT16 and see if it works.

If, out of the factory, the device is formatted as FAT32, then the problem is probably due to it being sensitive to low-level filesystem characteristics like the cluster (allocation unit) size or the partition table. Given that you have one unit that is formatted as FAT32 and works, examine the device's partitioning and formatting:

• What is the cluster size?
• Is there an MBR partition table, or is the device directly formatted without a partition table?
• If there is a partition table, how are the partition(s) laid out?

Try to match the factory configuration of the file system and partitioning when you format the non-working MP3 player and see if that helps.

Also, based on the text of your question, it looks like you're trying to format it on a Mac, which may produce results that differ from what the MP3 player expects. If you have access to a Windows or Linux system, try formatting it there.

---

Technical details

A 2 GB storage device will generally have less than 2 GiB of addressable storage space. With a few exceptions, nonvolatile storage devices are measured in decimal units while volatile memory devices are measured in binary units.

Most storage devices with such low capacities are formatted from the factory as FAT16 because FAT32's long filename functionality was patented and required a license fee to implement. Although these patents have now expired, it is likely that manufacturers will continue to use FAT16 for <2 GiB storage devices out of inertia. For the same reason, low-capacity MP3 players are unlikely to implement FAT32 support.

The firmware on simpler electronic devices like MP3 players is often designed with certain restrictive assumptions about its storage media, including cluster sizes, partition layouts, and the location of the filesystem's internal data structures. If, as formatted by the computer, the storage media doesn't match up with what the device expects, it may not be able to access the filesystem.