How Do I Get My Computer To Recognize MY SD Card?

[Chris_H_2]

I have a high-capacity SD card (something like 30 GB) that I want to transfer music onto so I can play it in my car. The problem is, when I put the SD card in, I can't find it anywhere on my computer, let alone open it. My computer is a 2012 desktop, so it should recognize it. Not sure what I'm doing wrong or where I need to look. Anyone?

[knee tunes]

take SD card out
reboot
reinsert SD card

it should recognize & bring it up automatically.

[Chris_H_2]

Didn't work

[knee tunes]

blow into the SD card hole.
then repeat above steps

[Chris_H_2]

[knee tunes]

tell me you never fixed something by blowing into it

[nyquillyn]

Some newer cards come formatted in NTFS or have weird partitions that can't be read. But they'll likely show up in "Disk Management" in Windows. Just reformat the SD card as FAT 32.

EDIT: Keep in mind, this WILL wipe all the data currently on your card.

[Sgt. Crackpot]

Is your card read SD or SDHC?

In the original SD format it stores 4096 clusters with up to 512 blocks, each block containing 512 bytes of information. This gave a card capacity of 4096 x 512 x 512 = 1 Gigabyte. These cards typically came pre-formatted to the FAT-16 file system with the MBR partition scheme. This meant that any computer or host type device would recognise them through a card reader.

With the advent of high capacity cards the block capacity was increased from 512 bytes to 1024 and 2048 giving a capacity of 4096 x 2048 x 2048 = 32 Gigabytes, and these cards can only be formatted to the FAT-32 file system.

For this reason an SD card reader will not recognise the data stream from a SDHC card. If you wish to use an SDHC card you must have an SDHC card reader. The reader will access the information so the computer can handle it.

[dkfan9]

not sure why a 2012 pc wouldn't support sdhc

[Chris_H_2]

This is what's confusing me. Everything I've read said that really only older models wouldn't support SDHD. I would have thought a 2012 would support it.

I've read about the FAT 32. I've also read about trying to access them through Disk Management. So far, when I put the card in, I see nothing in Disk Management that even remotely resembles my card.

Is reformatting easy? I assume I can just google and find a step by step.

[Chris_H_2]

By the way, I appreciate everyone's help.

[Norah]

My SD card has been giving me issues, randomly being unrecognizable by my phone. I reformatted to ex-FAT and since then it's worked beautifully.

[Norah]

Sorry but that doesn't help you at all.

[Sgt. Crackpot]

This is what's confusing me. Everything I've read said that really only older models wouldn't support SDHD. I would have thought a 2012 would support it.

I've read about the FAT 32. I've also read about trying to access them through Disk Management. So far, when I put the card in, I see nothing in Disk Management that even remotely resembles my card.

Is reformatting easy? I assume I can just google and find a step by step.

Do you have a digital camera that recognizes it? If so, pop it in and use the camera's format function, and then try it again on your PC.

[Chris_H_2]

This is what's confusing me. Everything I've read said that really only older models wouldn't support SDHD. I would have thought a 2012 would support it.

I've read about the FAT 32. I've also read about trying to access them through Disk Management. So far, when I put the card in, I see nothing in Disk Management that even remotely resembles my card.

Is reformatting easy? I assume I can just google and find a step by step.

Do you have a digital camera that recognizes it? If so, pop it in and use the camera's format function, and then try it again on your PC.

I'll have to try that when I get home. Mucho gracioso.

[knee tunes]

well?

[Chris_H_2]

Waiting to get our camera back from my inlaws so I can try this out. Fingers crossed.

[dkfan9]

reformatting will wipe your data. you probably know that, but just in case not and you have something on there you want to get off, fair warning.

[Chris_H_2]

reformatting will wipe your data. you probably know that, but just in case not and you have something on there you want to get off, fair warning.

Thanks. Good to know. The card is actually new -- I'm just looking to format it to get music on it so I don't constantly have to take my ipod out of our one car everytime I take our other card.