It might seem redundant but there are a lot of cases where using the SD formater will help,
for example if the microSD has a format non readable by windows or the OS where it will be burned,
I suppose even if the format is not recognized by OS, Win32 Disk imager or 'dd' should be able to write nevertheless...
SD formater is low level format (erase) so restores the MicroSD to original state, same way it helps on
MicroSD cards that have lost space, if we select the resize option, it will format the MicroSD and restore its
original space, so it ensures users will have no errors at all when doing the next steps.
Thanks, this makes perfect sense, it is possible SD Formatter does something to restore a previously whacked SD card. I agree its a good idea to have it in the instructions just in case.
On another note: probably the right setup would be to use it with external USB HDD/SSD (but NOT an ordinary USB Flash), or with a NFS network storage, to prevent the coin daemons from killing the SD card by frequent write accesses...