Internal sd card reader not working on mid 2010 mac mini after high sierra update

Question

Dwstewart Author

Level 1

14 points

Internal sd card reader not working on mid 2010 mac mini after high sierra update

Problem:

internal sd card reader not working on mid 2010 mac mini after high sierra update!

I have 3 mid 2010 Mac mini’s used around my property as home automation machines running indigo software.

All three have been upgraded to 256 SSD‘s and 8 GB of ram.

All machines have 128 GB SD cards used to backup via time machine.

All has been fine until I started to upgrade these to latest OS.

On two of them after upgrading I can no longer see the SD cardS or the drives.

When running a system report the software states no internal Apple SDCard drive is present.

Anyone else had this happen to them?

The 3rd machine is still back at Sierra and all is fine.

I also have a 2014 MacMini which I have updated and all is well with a this machine.

Any my help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dennis

Mac mini, macOS High Sierra (10.13), Internal SD Card reader problems

Posted on Sep 30, 2017 7:19 PM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

90,946 points

Oct 1, 2017 3:31 PM in response to Dwstewart

Wow great work.

I'd try resetting the SMC and NVRAM on the Mid 2010 running High Sierra, then re-check the Card Reader.

Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

How to reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

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Answer 2

Dwstewart Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 7, 2017 8:19 AM in response to fly4fn

Hi glad to see someone else is experiencing this issue and not just me….

As you see I just update my latest efforts in a post to the other person who has been reading this thread.

After seeing your post I went back out to this older machine in my shop and took along a couple more cards and a SanDisk USB Card Card Reader to see if this Mac Mini could see all the same cards that could not be seen via the internal card reader.

Well I took all these cards Mac and Fat 32 formatted and used the USB reader to see if the installed Mac OS would see them on this Mid 2010 Mac Mini.

The answer…

All is fine the reader displays them just fine at finder level and also via the Disk Utility app.

So as I stead in my previous post I feel the is an os level problem that has been over looked by the engineers via all the Beta testing that has supposedly been going on.

Hopefully we get an apple support person to stumble upon this conversation and move it up the food chain to an engineering group that will look into this problem.

Again thanks fo letting me know that you too have experienced this problem.

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Answer 3

den.thed

Level 10

90,946 points

Sep 30, 2017 9:06 PM in response to Dwstewart

Hi Dennis

First off, take a look at > Prepare for APFS in macOS High Sierra - Apple Support

Then go to either About This Mac (SATA and Card Reader), Disk Utility or Terminal diskutil list whichever your comfortable with and....

1. Check the format of your SSDs to see if High Sierra changed them from Mac OS Extended (HSF+) to APFS.

2. Check the format of those SD cards to see if they were changed from Mac OS Extended (HSF+) to APFS as well.

While I do not have an immediate solution. I'm guessing that High Sierra may have changed the SD Cards as well and that might explain why the SD Cards no longer work for Time Machine.

FWIW, I have a 2010 and two 2012 Mac Mini's that all have been fitted with SSDs. Generally I'm an early adopter when it comes to OS X and macOS upgrades, but to be honest this one have me a little leery because of the APFS format change. At this point, I think that I may use one of the 2012 Mac Mini's as a guinea-pig in the next day or two.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm digging for information instead of helping, but to be honest with similarly upgraded Mac Mini's I am....

Dennis

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Answer 4

den.thed

Level 10

90,946 points

Oct 1, 2017 7:10 PM in response to Dwstewart

Hmmm... wish I had a definite answer for you.

1. Test a smaller SD card for kicks to see if Disk Utility can see and re-format it.

2. Insert the 128GB SD card in question into the 2010 Mac Mini, startup in macOS Recovery, go to Disk Utility and see if you can Repair the 128GB SD card with Disk Utility in macOS Recovery. Then restart normally and check to see if the SD card is recognized.

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I was working on another project that required my full attention.

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Answer 5

Dwstewart Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 7, 2017 8:11 AM in response to den.thed

Well here is my latest follow up to my attempt to get this High Sierra install to work with this Mid 2010 Mac Mini.

I went out to the shop with a couple of additional SD cards and attempted to get the internal reader and subsequent disk utility tool to see them.

Again no luck with any combination.

And then to add insult to injury I installed the 10.10.3 Supplemental update 1.0
and upon reboot the card reader was not listed in the system report
under >About the Mac > System Report >Card Reader.

And of course the media could not be seen,

I then had to shut down and do an SMC reset ( An SMC reset on a desktop is just shutting down the device and removing the power cord for 30 seconds and then plugging it back in and restarting the device) upon completion of this reset the card reader is now listed but again no media can be seen at finder level or via disk utility app.

So I am no better off than before.

Hopefully we get an apple support person to stumble upon this conversation and move it up the food chain to an engineering group that will look into this problem.

That is all for now.

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Answer 6

Dwstewart Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 1, 2017 4:00 PM in response to den.thed

Thanks for the suggestions.

Applied the SMC reset and the SD Card reader appeared in the system report!

Thanks,

I then inserted the SD card that was formatted in MAC OS Extended format and still not seen.

I even tried to see it using disk utils no-joy.

I then removed media and preformed the NVRAM reset.

SD Card reader still seen in Sys report just fine now.

But no media seen when reinserted.

Again tried with disk utils no-joy again...

Brought media back to Late 2014 Mac Mini to verify with High Sierra and it can be seen just fine here.

We are a little closer ...

Thanks,

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Answer 7

fly4fn

Level 1

4 points

Oct 6, 2017 7:49 PM in response to Dwstewart

I have the same card reader issue with a mid-2010 Mac Mini which has been upgraded with a SSD, so the High Sierra upgrade also upgraded the file system to APFS. I also have a 2014 Mac Mini with a spinning hard disk (and therefore is still using HFS+ even under High Sierra) which does not have the problem with its card reader. The cards themselves are FAT32 SD cards from cameras for image transfer.

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Answer 8

den.thed

Level 10

90,946 points

Oct 12, 2017 9:45 AM in response to Dwstewart

This is a User to User Forum.

You can send feedback directly to Apple, using > Feedback - macOS - Apple

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Answer 9

Dwstewart Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 12, 2017 8:27 AM in response to Gabriel-am

Hi Gabriel-am,

Thanks so much for posting your information that you too, are experiencing this same problem.

Hopefully someone at Apple will be reviewing these threads and will let the OSX development team know there is a problem.

Again thanks for letting all of us in this thread and hopefully Apple, know there is something wrong.

Dennis

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Answer 10

fly4fn

Level 1

4 points

Oct 7, 2017 6:31 PM in response to Dwstewart

One day later and the SD card reader suddenly started to work normally. I don't know what action caused it to start working, and I hope it keeps on working, but for now all seems well again.

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Answer 11

Oct 11, 2017 2:34 PM in response to Dwstewart

I have the same card reader issue with my mid-2010 Mac Mini.

I read the post and i have exaclty the same problems, and i tried the same things as you did with exactly the same results.

😟

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Answer 12

Dwstewart Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 12, 2017 10:04 AM in response to den.thed

I'm aware of that.

And I had already submitted detailed information to them.

Regards,

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Answer 13

Nov 5, 2017 6:11 PM in response to Dwstewart

Just came across these posts after discovering tonight that the SD card I'd been using for Time Machine backups on my 2010 Mac Mini (upgraded to 128gb SSD) is also not visible. Went through pretty much the same steps here, got the reader to show in System Report after resetting SMC, but no cards actually detected. I just submitted a report to Apple as well - any updates on resolving this issue in the past month?

Thanks!

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Answer 14

Dwstewart Author

Level 1

14 points

Nov 6, 2017 8:45 AM in response to yuppppasd

Hi,

Thanks for replying that you too are have this problem.

Also thanks for reporting it to Apple.

Unfortunately I have never recieved a reply from them regarding this issue.

In my report to them I refenerenced this link to provide additional information.

I was hoping tha with these point releases they would address this issue.

But so far I see no improvment,

After each point release the card reader is not seen until an SMC is done and then same problem.

So for now I have chosen to use a SanDisk USB Card Reader in a USB port to continue to back up until apple addresses and fixes this problem.

Regards,

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Answer 15

Nov 6, 2017 3:16 PM in response to Dwstewart

Ah ok, I think I may have to go the USB route as well. I'm guessing a 7-year-old computer isn't a priority for Apple, but this is something that should have been easily caught in testing the OS upgrade.

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