c# - How to programatically format an SD card with FAT16?

Question

I'd like to initialize an SD card with FAT16 file system. Assuming that I have my SD reader on drive G:, how I can easily format it to FAT16 ?

UPDATE: To clarify, I'd like to do that on .net platform using C# in a way that I can detect errors and that would work on Windows XP and above.

Answer 1

You could use pinvoke to call SHFormatDrive.

[DllImport("shell32.dll")]
static extern uint SHFormatDrive(IntPtr hwnd, uint drive, uint fmtID, uint options);

public enum SHFormatFlags : uint {
     SHFMT_ID_DEFAULT = 0xFFFF,
     SHFMT_OPT_FULL = 0x1,
     SHFMT_OPT_SYSONLY = 0x2,
     SHFMT_ERROR = 0xFFFFFFFF,
     SHFMT_CANCEL = 0xFFFFFFFE,
     SHFMT_NOFORMAT = 0xFFFFFFD,
}

//(Drive letter : A is 0, Z is 25)

uint result = SHFormatDrive( this.Handle, 
              6, // formatting C:
              (uint)SHFormatFlags.SHFMT_ID_DEFAULT,
              0 ); // full format of g:
if ( result == SHFormatFlags.SHFMT_ERROR ) 
    MessageBox.Show( "Unable to format the drive" );