The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    SD card reader

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by paolo2, Sep 5, 2013.

  1. paolo2

    paolo2 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    91
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Recently bought a secondhand macbook pro 15", 2011 model.
    I have installed windows, so now dual boot.
    The other day I put in a SD card from my camera and it is not recognised, nothing happens at all, (on the mac side), however when i boot into windows 7, it works fine, so I know it's not a hardware issue.
    I have trawled through the internet and it seems a common problem, but I cannot find a workable fix, other than boot into windows every time I want to use it.
    Anybody have any ideas how to fix this?
     
    paolo2, Sep 5, 2013
    #1
  2. saturnotaku

    saturnotaku Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    4,879
    Messages:
    8,926
    Likes Received:
    4,707
    Trophy Points:
    431
    Does the SD card show up in Disk Utility?
     
    saturnotaku, Sep 5, 2013
    #2
  3. paolo2

    paolo2 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    91
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    No, but it does show up in the system report.
     
    paolo2, Sep 5, 2013
    #3
  4. ClearSkies

    ClearSkies Well no, I'm still here..

    Reputations:
    1,059
    Messages:
    2,633
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Is the SD card formatted in FAT32 or NTFS?
     
    ClearSkies, Sep 5, 2013
    #4
  5. paolo2

    paolo2 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    91
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I have tried 3 different cards now, no change. I even formatted one ( in windows as fat 32), again, no change.
     
    paolo2, Sep 6, 2013
    #5
  6. kornchild2002

    kornchild2002 Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    1,007
    Messages:
    1,925
    Likes Received:
    32
    Trophy Points:
    66
    OS X can read NTFS just fine, it can't write to NTFS formatted media. However, I believe SD and SDHC cards should be formatted using fat32 (as per the standard for those cards) and SDXC needs to be exFAT (again, as per the standard). I've read a couple of things online that you can try:
    1. Try inserting and taking the card out, quickly, multiple times until OS X finally detects it. You won't readily know if OS X has detected the card unless you open up Finder (unless you have disk icons enabled for your desktop as I do). It should appear in the devices menu to the left.

    2. Unplug every USB device you have and then try number 1 until the card has been read.

    The hardware is fine since the system is reading the cards through Windows, you just have to get OS X to snap out of it. What version of OS X are you running?
     
    kornchild2002, Sep 6, 2013
    #6
  7. paolo2

    paolo2 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    91
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Update:
    I've also had some issues with seeing it in windows, having to jiggle the card quite a bit for it to work, but when it did see it, I booted into OSX and the mac side could see it.
    So maybe just dirty connections.
     
    paolo2, Sep 8, 2013
    #7
  8. kornchild2002

    kornchild2002 Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    1,007
    Messages:
    1,925
    Likes Received:
    32
    Trophy Points:
    66
    You did buy a use MBP after all. It could be a dirty media card reader with some dust and/or lint in it. There might be a deeper physical issue with the card reader too but you wouldn't be able to determine this without opening the MBP up and doing a little disassembling.
     
    kornchild2002, Sep 9, 2013
    #8
  9. paolo2

    paolo2 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    91
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    You're right, of course, I may open it up and have a go at cleaning it, already given it a good clean inside, but missed the card reader.
     
    paolo2, Sep 12, 2013
    #9