Noobs won't boot on my PI2 - Debian image works fine

Question

I did get my pi2 recently; and I did get it with a SD card with Debian pre-installed.

Then I decided to try Noobs, so I did format the card with the window utility (doing the overwrite procedure, it took a while but the card should be clean); and downloaded 1.9 Noobs from the Pi site.

I did copy the content of the zip file in the card, but when I plug it in the pi2, it won't do anything. I get solid red and green lights; removing and inserting the card does nothing; it seems that it won't even read the bootloader from the card (no sign of flashing on the LED).

Not sure what am I doing wrong; I can wipe again the card and install an image of Debian, to verify that it works, but I would rather figure out why even following the instructions, I can't get the pi to boot Noobs.

EDIT: I did burn the Debian image on the card, and it works just fine; the boot happens as soon as I power the PI, so the issue must be the Noobs zip file at this point. Too bad that I can't use it for multi boot,I am not that proficient with doing all by hand yet.

Answer 1

Found the problem.

Cards that are bigger than 32 GB are formatted automatically as EXFAT, not as FAT.

This means that the Pi can't read the EXFAT FS, and it won't boot. To use a bigger card, you need a tool that format it as FAT, as explained in this link.

Once you've done that, it works fine. Not sure why they don't point out that the size of the card matter, in their instructions.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/sdxc_formatting.md