I ordered from ebay a 2GB M2 card for an older Sony Ericsson mobile phone. They sent me an 8GB card instead.
That would be really cool, but I ordered the 2GB specificaly because AFAIK the specific mobile phone cannot handle anything bigger than 2GB.
Is it possible to format the card as 2GB?
You should be able to create a 2gb partition on the card and format that. The phone probably doesn’t care how big the card is*, only how large the filesystem is. So using a computer and card reader, delete the existing partition on the card, and then create a new partition at 2gb, and (optionally) a second partition with the remaining 6gb. Then format the partitions as FAT or FAT32 file systems.
How exactly you partition and format the card will depend on your operating system, and can probably be answered with a Google search.
Or, try the 8gb card as is, and see what happens.
*Sometimes memory cards will change key technology as they get larger, and some older devices will not be able to access larger cards.
I believe I used partition magic on such a card way back, but that might have been a USB drive.
Also
I did have a camera that had a 2 GB card limit in print, but a 8 GB card worked fine.
Thanks. I’ll first try the card as is. The phone is updated with the latest firmware. Maybe it will work.
Your phone might support the larger format, since the M2 format was designed with up to 16GB in mind.
It’s surprising how many products designed for one memory standard turn out to be incompatible with later extensions (or fulfillment) or the standard. I’ve seen many problems with devices released when (say) 2GB chips were the standard and larger ones were only in prototype, which turn out to be incompatible with the later iterations even though everything was technically made to meet the standard.
On the flipside, there are also plenty of products that work just fine with things out of spec for what they claim to support. Generally, someone makes the decision that limiting official support to a smaller subset wouldn’t hurt sales enough to justify the extra money and effort to test with other configurations.
This here says that it supports up to 4GB. Sony Ericsson W910 - Full phone specifications
Of course this limitation could apply only with the original firmware (I hope so).
Sure; say, Nikon will only guarantee operation with specific models of 16GB SD card, when in reality any compliant card from any maker will likely work.
What I meant is that while a camera or phone designed early in a memory standard is supposed to be able to work with standard extensions under development, the reality a year down the road is that they won’t. The camera says it is THX-1138 compliant, but the larger chips under that standard just don’t work in it because the standard evolved or the camera maker cut corners.
UPDATE: I tried the card today “as is”. Although it detected the full card capacity, it couldn’t write anything on it.
I reformatted the card with EaseUS. I created a 3GB partition and left the rest unallocated. I haven’t tried it yet. Hope it works.
I am aware of this, that’s why I said “might” - all depending on the device.