# SD Cards not showing up



## billybohank (Apr 1, 2008)

Hey Y'all, Ok, I need some help, I have 2 SD cards that are not readable through any means, one is brand new. I have a all in 1 card reader, which works with other SD cards, both in Win XP Pro, SP2, and Mac OSX 10.5, though it shows no media for 2 of the cards I have. I have gone through Device Manager, tried to Populate Volumes, which times out as no media, through disk manager it shows no media, only the removable media drive. With Mac it just does not show anything plugged in. I have a Palm TX which shows unusable media with the old card, and no card inserted with the second one. I can find no way to format, can someone help me out?:upset:


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## Rob 1 (Apr 2, 2008)

I suspect that you formatted those two cards on a mac system. If so, they are no how no way
going to work on your windows machine until you change the format.

Windows gets really confused when it sees another format, so it won't even wipe the SD card for you.

You need to wipe the card, and start again. Dban won't work, either.

I highly suggest using Killdisk. You will want to make a bootable cd with it, and plug the card into your reader then bootup your machine into Killdisk, and have it write zeros to the drive.

When it's done, you will be able to reformat the card to fat32 for windows.

A lot of work, yes. But that will fix it.


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## billybohank (Apr 1, 2008)

I have not formated it at all yet, I bought it brand new and it does not show up under an OS


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## billybohank (Apr 1, 2008)

Ok, so how do I go about creating a killdisk, and get this thing going? I just dont get how a brand new card can be unreadable to all devices, I have tried it in cameras, multiple computers and my palm, and none of them even see it?


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## Rob 1 (Apr 2, 2008)

Don't worry about killdisk if it's never been formatted. I only mentioned that because it's
a very common problem on the internet.

In this case if it's never been formatted, you need to go to 
Right click "my computer" > manage > Disk Management

That should give you a popup where you can get that done.


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## billybohank (Apr 1, 2008)

Yeah, thats one of the first things I tried, it shows the removable media drive, though does not show any media present, so I cant format anything. Next?


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## Rob 1 (Apr 2, 2008)

billybohank said:


> Yeah, thats one of the first things I tried, it shows the removable media drive, though does not show any media present, so I cant format anything. Next?


Well if the drive works with other media, then there's the possibility the cards are just dead.


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