SD Card Not Being Recognized

You just have one card, or can you try a different one?

it's possible that the SD card is in a format the computer dose not recognize. Check if it shows up in disk utilities.

If you don't know how to get to disk utilities: go to the dock. click on the finder. go to the menu bar. click on the "go" menu, chose "Utilities." Double click on "Disk Utilities." If the SD card is being recognized it should show up on the left row. Some where bellow where it says "Macintosh HD."

Alternatively you could also check if the Internal Memory Card Reader is being recognized by the computer.

To do this. Goto the menu bar. Click on the black apple, click on "About this Mac." A window will pop up, click on the "More Info" button. This will open system profiler, on the left side of the system profiler there should be a list. One of the items on the list should be Hardware, next to the word hardware there should be a triangle. If it's point right, click on it so it's point down. Under that there should be "usb." it's near the bottom, Probable right above "networking." click on usb.
On the right column there should be an item on the list called "Internal Memory Card Reader"

It may not be your SD card reader. Are you using a high quality SD card? Have you tried other SD cards? I am having the same problem and it may be an update/ software problem.

My computer went from one night reading my SDHC card and having everything fine to the next morning suddenly not reading it.


The SD card reader I use is the type that looks like a flash drive. I tested a few SD cards, it reads some, others do not register & others ask to initialize. 




*I Noticed it is the SDHC and HD ones that have the problem, the low quality simple ones read fine.*



I tested the same SDHC and HD cards and SD card reader on a PC and they work fine 😟



Also, I doubt this is a factor but my higher quality SD cards are 4GB and 8GB while my low quality cards are 2GB.

I read that people with Leopard and Snow Leopard are having the same problem. I do not believe that I updated the night my computer stopped reading my SDHC card but I have updated since and continue to have the same problem.

I may need to re-install my operating system but do not know if that will help as it may be an update problem. Please let me know if you noticed the same problem and/or were able to find a solution. 



Here is to hoping this is fixed SOON 🙂

My 27" doesn't recognize any cards either. Annoying.

It shows up in my "About this Mac," hardware profile.

Interestingly, I have an external card reader (one of those griffin iphone docks with the card readers in them) which works fine. I wonder if that is messing it up

Charlie,

How did you remove your card? Did you drag it to the Trash to Eject (unmount) it? I believe that is the way Mac OS X 10.6 expects it to be removed. My new i7 iMac reads an old 256 MB SD card taken from a Palm PDA just fine.

I have the exact same problem.
The old SD cards (1 Gb) are read by the card reader just fine, as they had been for years. The new SDHC PNY 4 Gb card can not be read. The card can be read through the camera to computer via USB.

Yes, I have just discovered the problem too.

Needed to use the SD card for the first time to update firmware on a Kodak Zi8 videocam, and the 1GB card I have on hand is not found 😟

There is a new 16GB on the way to me, and I sincerely hope it recognizes that one...

I have a MacBook Pro (mid 2009). The card slot was fine until yesterday. Now, the card does not mount. I recently installed Picasa and Facebook importer. Not sure if that made a difference, but the card slot does not work.

My card is a SD SC - Sandisk Extreme III 4GB

I have a 16GB Memory Stick Pro Duo that is not being recognized by the build-in card reader on the side, here. Please help.

Mine wasnt recognized either until one of the posts advised me that I had to put a card in the reader to have it recognized, otherwise it is invisible. It worked just as he said it would!

follow up to my earlier post.. The 16GB card I was waiting for was also unrecognized. However, I found a 2GB Sandisk card which I hadn't tried before, plugged it in, and this card was unrecognized too, as before.

Scratched my head a bit, and, leaving the card in the reader slot I did a restart, and blow me down, it mounted OK! 🙂 It even remounted OK after ejecting.

So, I was able to update firmware on my Zi8 after all..

Message was edited by: cintra

Ok, I did a restart and zapped the PRAM optoncommand+PR , all is working fine !

Ok. I'll give that a try....

That did not work....:-(

Hooohummm....I'll just buy a 15 dollar card reader.

Having similar issues but I see a common theme here. Many of your low capacity(<1GB) work, but then a higher capacity will not. My low capacity microSD through a card reader works fine, but a 4GB and 8GB of the same brand does not. My company PC pulls the same crap on me and that is strictly a capacity issue. It's likely, to my disappointment, that our Macs are behaving like a PC.