Can't erase a pendrive and SD card

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Level 1

4 points

Can't erase a pendrive and SD card

Hey, I use a M2 mac mini (Ventura 14.3.1) and I have issue with my computer.

When I started transferring files from my computer to a pendrive, an error appeared in one of the folders. There was a problem with the upload because the computer thought this one file did not exist (at the time of upload). Once I found the file, I played it and it opened normally. I will add that it was an mp3 file and the music played normally. Now when I want to delete any file on this pendrive trying on my computer or old MacBook, the files are automatically copied and not deleted. What also happens is that they disappear, and the computer shows that the pendrive is empty. When I try to erase the flash drive (MS-DOS FAT 32), I get error -69888 or -69673. I tried on a new and old computer. The situation is similar with the connected SD card, which I also cannot delete. When I add a file to the card, e.g. a photo, after disconnecting and reconnecting it - the photo is not there but it was there before.

Btw, I tried this but nothing worked (usb boot drive, recovery partition, command line)

https://ugetfix.com/ask/how-to-fix-couldnt-unmount-disk-error-on-mac/

Mac mini (M2, 2023)

Posted on Oct 12, 2023 8:39 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

69,554 points

Oct 17, 2023 7:36 PM in response to kakako15

Completely agree with @ku4hx.

Did you try erasing the whole physical drive? Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility.

Usually for USB sticks and SD Cards you will want to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and FAT32, however, if the SD card is to be used in a camera or other device, then it is usually best to let that device properly prepare the SD card instead.

If erasing the whole physical drive doesn't work either, then try using Windows to delete all partitions on the USB stick or SD Card. Then see if Disk Utility will erase them. You can use the macOS command line to write zeroes to the beginning of the physical drive in order to destroy the partition table since macOS & Disk Utility can get confused by a partition table or image put on a drive from another source. If you are not familiar with the command line, then trying to write zeroes to the beginning of the drive is risky since you may accidentally overwrite & destroy something important since the command line has no safety nets or undo feature.

If none of this helps, then it usually indicates a hardware issue with the drive itself.

The quality of USB sticks is extremely poor even those from popular name brands. I don't use USB sticks for storing any important data since I have seen USB sticks corrupt data quite often (yes, I do perform tests on USB sticks to see if they have any issues maintaining their integrity of the data).

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Answer 2

ku4hx

Level 7

23,694 points

Oct 14, 2023 3:16 PM in response to kakako15

My experience with flash drive and cards is they are all finicky, unreliable and just plain irksome.

Cards are relegated to camera use only, flash drives are limited to standby bootable OS installation drives and transfers of all types are done either with a 250GB portable SSD or iCloud.

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Can't erase a pendrive and SD card

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