# Can't format SD Card



## karusho

The other day I bought a Secure Digital Card from Fry's, brand PRETEC. It said that it was a 128MB SD HI-SPEED PRETEC with 60x speed, but i wasn't too impressed with the packaging (the back had 9 languages, but only one sentence each: PRETEC SD memory card is an excellent and reliable media for your digital life.)

Anyways, when I tried to plug it into an mp3 player with an expandable slot, and plugged it into Win eXPerience to put songs on it, it blew in my face and said, "L: is not formatted, format? (Y/Y)" or something like that, so I clicked yes, then 'Format', and EUREKA! it FAILED! OMG i wasn't expecting that one at all *cough*

Now, I'm wondering how the hell do I format it?


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## Terrister

See if this program helps. http://www.cnetx.com/format/download.asp


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## Raylo

I am having a similar issue with a new ATP 2 GB SD card. It came formatted and works fine in my Canon S2 IS digicam and Dell Axim PDA. But my Toshiba Satellite 5105 series laptop built-in SD card reader doesn't see the card. It asks me if I want to format the card and then when I click yes I get an error that the SD card can't be formated.

I downloaded Flash Format to my Axim and formatted the SD card once in FAT 16 and when that didn't work tried FAT 32. That didn't work either.

I visited Toshiba to check for drivers and the SD card reader driver was dated 2006 so it was probably the original. I downloaded/installed it anyway.... no help.

BTW the SD reader works perfectly with other SD cards up to 1GB. Is there an inherent 1GB limit on a SD card reader/firmware of this vintage? If so is there a solution short of buying an external SD reader? Or do I have a bad SD card (even though it works fine in camera and PDA)?

Thanks for any assistance.







Terrister said:


> See if this program helps. http://www.cnetx.com/format/download.asp


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## Raylo

Oh, to be clear, Flash Format worked perfectly and the SD card still worked fine in camera and PDA, just not in the Tosh laptop.



Raylo said:


> I downloaded Flash Format to my Axim and formatted the SD card once in FAT 16 and when that didn't work tried FAT 32. That didn't work either.


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## Terrister

Then you need to reload the flash reader driver.


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## Raylo

I already did that. I made a typo in my original message. The Toshiba SD reader driver for S-5105 series laptops is dated 2002, not 2006. I downloaded and reinstalled it and it made no difference. The reader still sees my 512 MB and 1GB Sandisk cards but not the 2GB ATP.

I just got off the phone with Toshiba (my 1st ever call to their tech support in 4 years, the computer has been very reliable) and the tech confirmed that I had the most recent SD reader driver and my machine should work with 2GB SD cards.



Terrister said:


> Then you need to reload the flash reader driver.


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## Raylo

*Solved!*

Instead of repeating the manual update of the Tosh SD reader driver I went to Win XP control panel - device manager - SD controller and clicked on the "update driver" tab and let the XP wizard do its thing. That did the trick. 




Raylo said:


> I already did that. I made a typo in my original message. The Toshiba SD reader driver for S-5105 series laptops is dated 2002, not 2006. I downloaded and reinstalled it and it made no difference. The reader still sees my 512 MB and 1GB Sandisk cards but not the 2GB ATP.
> 
> I just got off the phone with Toshiba (my 1st ever call to their tech support in 4 years, the computer has been very reliable) and the tech confirmed that I had the most recent SD reader driver and my machine should work with 2GB SD cards.


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