[Wing, P4350 ROM development] quicksite:
HOW TO: RECOVER an 8 GIG MicroSD HC Card after Partitioning

Sorry, I was letting off steam, but truly -- however it may read -- not directed at you. But at "the system" here, which, despite the amalgam and wide expanse of knowledge, has a really bad information design system for accessing knowledge... and a non-existent app & ROM Version Control. But that's okay because I am building a new front-end -- heavily supported by video, a layman's "Where Do I Start?", and database driven Apps lists cross-referenced by authors, titles, related apps, author websites, donation links to all ...

In meantime, after venting, I patiently pored over many other volumes across many sites, and have fully restored and reformatted my 8g Micro SD.

I will spell out details another time, because my main focus was to load a new rom and use my phone :)

In short: (Please note: the following deals only with cards you wish to restore to blank fully formatted original size; this is NOT a data restoration process. Most know this but I am just being explicit: Once the original WM5torage process was used, your data was overwritten. This won't help you at all if you never meant to do that.)

(1) Once you have those multiple partitions created via WM5torage, the Windows XP Disk Management tools you mentioned do not work. The "delete partition" options are greyed out, locked out. I confirmed this multiple times across various sites.

(2) One needle-in-haystack comment buried inside a thread suggested that one return to WM5storage to reformat. Amazingly, it was that simple. When the MicroSD card was back inside the phone using that "trick" hard drive (the MicroSD card within phone), then when using those Windows XP formatting tools, the partitions could be selected and deleted, thus returning the card to one volume.

(3) Even though that card now read the 7.59 gigs, or whatever its actual data size was, I did not want to take chances. I searched far and wide for microSD formatting utilities -- and found plenty listings -- but almost universal "bad news, sorry fellas" comments in threads. Again one needle in haystack posting on an obscure gaming site pointed me to an official MicroSD formatting tool from Panasonic, which is full standard compliant:

here: Panasonic SD Memory Card Formatting Software

http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/sd/download/sd_formatter.html

Direct Download Link: sdfv2003.exe (There is a 2-part installer process onto your PC, not your phone; it's easy to miss the 2nd part. But after a first installer process, another .exe file gets created in the download folder where the first installer is located. Then you must run this second app which will then bring you to low-level complete erase reformatting)

Panasonic's PDF Documentation/ How To Steps, dated Oct 1, 2008

After that formatting was complete, you remove the card from your reader, then wait a few seconds then reinsert it into reader, and your PC then reads it again. (Note: My card was already readable without running this Panasonic formatter. But this assured it was properly formatted to SDHC standard)

COPY BACK YOUR DATA: I copied my 7gigs worth of backup data from PC to this card, placed it back into my phone, and all is well. MP3s play fine, etc. I am now going to just use this 8g card as a normal data Storage card.

So, back to top: Does anyone know for sure whether a 1 GB microSD HC card, with one of Ivan's compact .nbh files copied to it, will flash the ROM? If the answer is "I don't know", then I will try that first. If that doesn't work I will then take that 1 Gig card, and partition it down to 200 MB -- that's just an arbitrary size I am picking since so far I have not discovered a proven standard. Many on other threads have said partition down to 1 gig (when using a 2 or 4 gig card), but since Ivan says he is not even sure an SDHC card will work at all, I will go for a way smaller-than-that size.

One thing I still don't know: My first go-round, when I copied the .nbh file to card's root, an .ini file appeared as well. Is this proper, or does this indicate the process was not done correctly?

I so look forward to solving this because I never want to flash via dumb active-sync again :D