SD card, once ejected, won't re-mount

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Level 1

29 points

SD card, once ejected, won't re-mount

I have a strange condition with a brand-new (Christmas 2014 purchase) late-2013 15" rMBP. An SD card inserted into the slot will mount if the computer has been freshly restarted. Once that card is ejected, however, no amount of inserting and re-inserting will allow it to mount again. It does not show up in Disk Utility, and System Report does not recognize that there is a card inserted (see images below).

Apple Hardware Test shows no faults with the machine. SMB reset has been performed and the card mounted, but the issue persisted after a card eject. Only a restart will allow the card to mount again.

Any SD card exhibits this behavior. Old 2GB Class 4 cards, newer 8GB Class 6 cards, and recent-era 64GB SDXC Class 10 cards all do exactly the same thing. All cards mount fine in an external card reader hooked up via USB.

I thought perhaps this was related to Dropbox auto-upload, which I disabled to no avail. I then thought it might be related to Backblaze, but Backblaze does not see the card when the system doesn't see it and therefore is not automatically backing it up.

The computer is running closed in clamshell mode, hooked up via DP to a Dell U2713HM.

I have cleaned the port with compressed air. I have inserted the card only 90% of the way. I have NOT wrapped a card in alcohol-soaked paper towel as I think that's about as ludicrous a solution as I've come across in this vast crowd-sourced world we have now.

If there is no obvious solution that I'm overlooking, I'm making an appointment at our local Genius Bar to show our resident troubleshooters the issue. I should be able to replicate it without any issues.

Thanks in advance for any help you all can offer.

Michael M.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10), 2.3 i7 / 16GB / 512 GB / GT 750M

Posted on Jan 11, 2015 3:41 PM

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Answer 1

whizzo Author

Level 1

29 points

Jan 18, 2015 4:20 PM in response to whizzo

EDIT:

The machine went to the Genius Bar. The Genius replicated the issue, and recommended a left-side IO board replacement. That procedure was performed, and at first appeared to address the issue. SD cards inserted in the store ejected and re-mounted successfully.

The issue has re-emerged, however, so it was clearly not a hardware (only) problem. When I mount the SD card named "Small Test" in the machine after a restart, the machine sees the card and shows the following messages in Console:

18.1.15 17:55:39.000 kernel[0]: hfs: mounted Small Test on device disk4s1

18.1.15 17:55:39.702 mds[34]: (Volume.Normal:2464) volume:0x7fbe16032a00 ********** Bootstrapped Creating a default store:0 SpotLoc:(null) SpotVerLoc:/Volumes/Small Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1 occlude:0 /Volumes/Small Test

That indicated to me that Spotlight was indexing the SD card. I added the card to Spotlight's privacy settings, and the next time I mounted it I got this message in Console:

18.1.15 17:55:52.000 kernel[0]: hfs: mounted Small Test on device disk4s1

18.1.15 17:58:30.000 kernel[0]: hfs: unmount initiated on Small Test on device disk4s1

So that's good. That's what is supposed to happen.

But after a period of time (a short period) after the SD card ejected, when put back into the slot it did not mount. Same behavior as before. This indicates to me that it's NOT a Spotlight problem but rather something else, something that is time-dependent. But I don't know what process that is. Time Machine, perhaps? I added the SD card to Time Machine exclusions as well, but to no avail. Plus, I'd have to do this for EACH SD card I insert, which seems ridiculous.

Clearly something is going on between the OS, the SD hardware, and the SD card. But I'm flummoxed as to what it is.

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Answer 2

whizzo Author

Level 1

29 points

Jan 23, 2015 12:50 PM in response to whizzo

Machine went back to the Apple Store last night, and left for repair. It is being shipped to the Apple Repair Depot for evaluation and repair. Likely it will receive a new logic board. If this fails to correct the problem, it's going back to the Authorized Reseller as a defective product and I will try again with a new machine.

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