Formatting a USB drive for use with the Elegoo Saturn 2 SLA printer using Windows 7 to 11

Figure 1.  Kingston USB 2.0 16 GB Drive

Notes:

1.   You want to be careful using disk management tools.  If you select the wrong drive you risk losing everything including your operating system.  So if you’re ‘mainly dangerous’ when it comes to computers then make a backup of your system and data using a package that you know you can recover from.  This is good practice for any computer.

2. Some cheap no-name USB drives really press the USB standards for current, read and write times, temperature, etc.  So I recommend starting with a reputable brand such as Sandisk, Kingston or Transcend to prevent a data read crash half way through your three hour print.

3. This is just one way of doing this task.  There are a many utilities and other methods for achieving the same result.  But every Windows computer comes with diskpart.exe so it’s already paid for (but not really free) and you already have it.

4. The maximum USB partition size for the Saturn 2 is 8 GB.  If your USB drive has a larger size (say 16 GB) then you can’t use the additional 8 GB with your Saturn 2.  The disk must be formated with a Master Boot Record partition table and be formatted as FAT32.

5.  The Elegoo Saturn 2 has a known design issue with the USB bridge integrated circuit.  If your Saturn 2 printer refuses to read from the USB drive then try a power off reset.  Then try the USB drive that came with your machine.  If the problem persists then its time to contact Elegoo for a new main board.

First we’re going to convert the USB drive from its current partition table format (likely GUID) to Master Boot Record (MBR) using diskpart.exe.

Click left on Start

Type ‘diskpart’

Click left on diskpart.exe

Type ‘list disk’ [Enter] and identify your USB drive (let’s say it’s disk 3).

Type ‘select disk 3’ [Enter]

Type ‘clean’ [Enter]

Type ‘convert mbr’ [Enter]

Now we’re going to make a new 8 GB primary partition and format this as FAT32, still using diskpart

Type ‘create partition primary size=8192’ [Enter]

Type ‘list volume’ and identify the 8 GB USB volume that you have just created (let’s say it’s Volume 7).

Type ‘select volume 7’ [Enter]

Type ‘format fs=fat32’, [Enter].  This will likely take a while as it is a low level format.

Type ‘exit’ [Enter] to close diskpart.

Give the USB drive a volume label using Windows File Explorer.  This isn’t essential, but it’s good data management practice and will assist in identifying disks that you’ve formatted for your Saturn.  I recommend something like Saturn or Elegoo.

Copy a _filename.cbt file to the USB disk and confirm that it can be read on your printer.

Click on Leveling at Z=0 to link to another page on the Saturn 2.