SD card formatting problem

[Fern Zaty]

I have a 2Gb SD card from an old camera. I want to format it for another purpose. My problem is, although my machine (iMac running 10.10.3 Yosemite), can see the card, in Finder and Disk Utility, all options to reformat are greyed out. The read / write switch on the card is set to allow both. For the record, I tried this with another two cards, same result. I also tried using the built in card reader on the side of the machine, and a USB SD card adaptor. Any advice would be great.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

I have heard of this issue before. It is usually because the cards are formatted as exFAT. If so, Disk Utility can't format them.

-What brand are they - PNY, SanDisk, etc.?

Some workarounds that people have used with success:
-Boot into the Recovery Partition and use Disk Utility there
-Move the lock switch halfway between the locked and unlocked position
-Format them on a PC to FAT/FAT32, then reformat them on the Mac

Hope that helps. Let us know how it goes.

C

 

[Fern Zaty]

Thanks for this, and it did help. Thought I was going to have to borrow a Windows machine, but, I admit skeptically, I decided to try the half way read/write switch first. It worked first time. Formatted the card just fine and it's now in productive service again. So again, thanks for the help

 

[Cory Cooper]

No worries...glad it's working again.

C