Solved Help Recognizing SD Card

The Sandisk Extreme 8 GB SD card has been working fine until recently. Actually it still works fine except for the fact that when I remove the 256 GB Sandisk Extreme Pro card from my HP Spectre 360 (see specs detailed) and insert the 8GB card the laptop doesn't recognize it at all, even though in the recent past it did. When I insert and remove the card the laptop make the "ding" noise indicating that the machine knows it is there but Windows Explorer doesn't show it, The card still works as designed in the camera (Canon SX130) and it is recognized in my Asus desktop as normal but not in the HP.

I copied the 1 GB worth of photos onto the Asus in order to format the disk in the camera but formatting the card did not help recognize it.

I also took the 32 GB Sandisk Extreme Plus out of my Canon Rebel T1i, which works normally, and the HP doesn't show it in Windows Explorer.

MiniTool Partition Wizard does show all 3 disks.

Any ideas what is going on?
John

starchase said:

Any ideas what is going on?

Click to expand...

Take a regular number two pencil with eraser, and use the eraser, to gently clean the gold contacts on the SD card.
That may solve your problem with the SD card.

Ghot said:

Take a regular number two pencil with eraser, and use the eraser, to gently clean the gold contacts on the SD card.
That may solve your problem with the SD card.

Click to expand...

Nope, didn't work, but nice try. I haven't tried yet uninstalling the reader in Device Manager - I don't want to screw things up worse, though I'll try that if anyone thinks it will help.

starchase said:

Nope, didn't work, but nice try. I haven't tried yet uninstalling the reader in Device Manager - I don't want to screw things up worse, though I'll try that if anyone thinks it will help.

Click to expand...

The SD card is probably not making good contact, or it's dying.
SD cards are pretty tough if you plug them in and leave them alone.

For situations where you need to remove and swap storage (a lot), a USB stick is a better bet.

I have a CANON EOS Rebel T4i. I just put the SD card in and never took it out (this was in 2013).
If I want to transfer files, I just use a cable.



I have an old MS joystick (USB) from 2001. I've been using it ever since.
Every now and then I get the "ding" and it would lose connection.

This would happen on and off over the years, different OSes, different computers.
Nothing I did in Windows made any difference.

Finally, I started cleaning it's USB connector with Isopropyl alcohol. I would also clean the USB port on the computer.
In other words... every time I had an issue, it turned out to be a dirty connection.

Ghot said:

The SD card is probably not making good contact, or it's dying.
SD cards are pretty tough if you plug them in and leave them alone.

Click to expand...

That is a possibility but I don't understand why MiniTool sees it but not Windows Explorer.

I had an HP laptop at my work that was a photogs laptop, and the sd card reader hot detection broke. For example, if you put in the sd card windows would not ding or see it at all. But if you disabled it in device manager and re-enabled it, it would see it and be able to browse the files. Or if you restarted the laptop with the sd card in.

Sounds like a software issue right? Well we wiped and reinstalled windows and used the latest driver and the issue was still there. So we tried an old driver. Nope. We tried a bunch of other things, changing drive letters etc and nothing we tried worked.

Apparently the sd card reader has a sensor that detects when the sd card is inserted, and that can fail. HP replaced just the sd card reader and the issue went away.

Was the weirdest thing.

I found the solution for my situation on Reddit in a reply from 3 years ago:

"There exists a weird bug with disk management / drive letter assignment on Win10+ when your PC stops recognizing ANY such sd cards/readers. Try disabling fast startup or checking if Device manager manual scan will show the sd card." from OneCrazyRussian

So went in Disk Management I assigned a drive letter to the SanDisk card and it now shows up in Windows Explorer. So all is good now.

starchase said:

I found the solution for my situation on Reddit in a reply from 3 years ago:

"There exists a weird bug with disk management / drive letter assignment on Win10+ when your PC stops recognizing ANY such sd cards/readers. Try disabling fast startup or checking if Device manager manual scan will show the sd card." from OneCrazyRussian

So went in Disk Management I assigned a drive letter to the SanDisk card and it now shows up in Windows Explorer. So all is good now.

Click to expand...

nice, glad it was an easy fix

starchase said:

Nope, didn't work, but nice try. I haven't tried yet uninstalling the reader in Device Manager - I don't want to screw things up worse, though I'll try that if anyone thinks it will help.

Click to expand...

Try wiping it with 70% Rubbing Alcohol or leave it a little wet and insert it.... The better solution is to use this when it comes to dirty contacts, your issue is similar to CD/DVD readers not working because of the Upper and Lower Filters.