SD card reader not working after OS X upgrade

Question

Level 1

4 points

SD card reader not working after OS X upgrade

In September 2018 I finally updated my Early 2011 MacBook Pro to OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan) whereupon I discovered that my MacBook Pro lost track of the fact that it had an onboard SD Card Reader.

Looking through community posts I soon discovered that this has been a problem since El Capitan was rolled out in September 2015. I also discovered that numerous posts disclosed "helpful" "solutions" to this problem (including voodo fixes via Terminal), none of which appear to work long term.

We are now six iterations in on El Capitan with no fix.

So, has Apple just decided to deactivate all of our onboard SD card readers?

Why?

Thanks!

Posted on Sep 29, 2018 9:45 AM

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Answer 1

Bert L. Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 30, 2018 8:21 PM in response to Eric Root

I have reset SMC, cleared PRAM, started in Restore mode, run Disk Utility in various modes, and nothing makes the onboard SD card slot discoverable on my early 2011MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan). The upgrade to El Cap took away my ability to use a built in feature of the machine. It worked fine before the upgrade. And yes, I know the SD cards are good, because I can pop them in a USB adapter and they show up and work just fine. I'd just rather get back a working SD card slot, as intended, and as built in to the MBP.

I've also tried some more advanced stuff with Terminal, but that didn't work either.

Incidentally, these are all the same suggestions that were provided in 2015/2016 (e.g., in this 13 page thread: sd card on iMac not working with el capitan ) and nothing works -- at least not for long. Everyone was hoping that there would be a fix in each new ".point" release. Nope.

Thanks everyone for trying to help.

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Answer 2

a brody

Level 10

85,296 points

Sep 30, 2018 5:14 PM in response to Bert L.

No, mine works on 10.13.6 on an iMac 11,3.

It is more likely, given the age of the machine that a reset of the SMC is required.

Does the SD card reader appear to not see anything with Disk Utility under system restore when you boot with command-R?

That would tell us more about what may be faulty.

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Answer 3

Bert L. Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 2, 2018 6:31 AM in response to Eric Root

I created a new Administrator account and booted up into it. SD cards still do not mount when inserted into the onboard SD card slot.

I guess I could try upgrading the Mac OS X of this early 2011 MacBook Pro to a more up-to-date version, but I'd really like to stay at OS X 10.11, to keep it on par with my ancient, mid 2007, iMac. I'll check the specs to see if the MBP can handle OS X 10.13.

Thanks again...

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