Problem
I need an SD card bigger than 3gb to load retro pi onto it but bizarrely I can only get 2gb micro SD cards to show in Windows Explorer.
The micro SD card is plugged into a micro SD card adaptor (the size of an SD card) which plugs into an SD card reader (which is about 15 years old) which plugs into the usb slot in my computer. So the setup isn't ideal and I have a micro sd adaptor in the post for delivery tomorrow incase it's the sd card readers fault. However, I have two 2gb micro SD cards that are both recognised with no problems in windows explorer & I can read and write files to them so I know that it's not necessarily the setup or the multiple adaptors fault.
When I add a micro SD card into the adaptor windows doesn't acknowledge it. I get the noise that a usb has been inserted but it doesn't show in windows explorer. Device manager registers a mass storage device in the USB slot but it doesn't show in the disk manager or windows explorer.
If I take any of the adaptors / cards out of their slots slightly windows recognises the drive for a split second and then greys it out as not available.
What I've tried already
I've tried a number of blogs & troubleshooting suggestions on here and google with not luck including the following:
- Tested the USB slots in my computer – I know that they work with other devices and mass storage devices & I've tested USB slots in the front and back.
- Buying a new micro SD card, all of which came with their own micro SD card adaptors, so I'm assuming that it's not that – I tried with 2 kingston 8gb cards that I already owned, bought a new 32gb kingston micro sd card & a 16gb SanDisk microSD card and none work.
- Changing the drive letter. As it says above disk manager doesn't recognise a micro SD card with anything larger than 2gb so I changed the drive letter with a 2gb card in and that didn't work – it just changed the drive letter
- Uninstalling the mass storage device in the device manager suggested in this post. That just hangs on the window scrolling saying that it's uninstalling. Once I left it a long time and as I pulled it out it suggested that I needed to reboot to properly uninstall which I did with no result.
- The PiHut article 'How to Format "Dead" SD Cards!' suggested in this post of using the SD Memory Card Formatter program – that doesn't recognise the micro SD card either.
- Formatting the micro SD card in a phone as suggested in the post above, that changes nothing.
Could it be the 15 year old USB SD card reader? If so, as I said above I have a new one on order in case but wanted to get some answers before that fails too!
Setup
Windows 10 – I can answer more questions about the setup if people think that it's necessary.
Help is much appreciated.
Best Answer
Buy a new SD card reader.
SD cards have gone through several generations from SD to SD-HC to SD-XC and so on, each of which tweaks the protocol and speeds slightly. As a result new cards may or may not work in old readers. If you have an SD card reader that does not support SD-HC or above then you will get exactly what you are seeing.
Particularly old readers may not be able to read cards larger than 2GB. 2GB was IIRC a limitation of the early SD specifications which has since changed.
From SDCard.org: SD, SDHC, SDXC and SDUC Card Capacity Choices
An SD host can only read SD cards, And SD-HC host can read SD-HC and SD cards and so on. SD (non HC) only supports 2GB or less. SDHC supports >2GB but <32GB. SDXC supports >32GB and <2TB.
So the compatibility, and age, of your reader matters. If you have an SD-only reader then you are limited to cards less than or equal to 2GB and can use the "vanilla" SD specification.