Hi,
I have had trouble mounting an SD card mentioned in the subject line (both and SD card and a microSD with a Trans Flash adapter).

If I issue this command: mount -t vfat -o loop /dev/sdd1 /mnt/memory. The card mounts but issuing an ls shown directories but in strange characters.

If I issue mount -t usbfs -o loop /dev/sdd1 /mnt/memory and then do an ls I get the following directories: 001, 002, 003 and an empty file called devices.

Any idea how I can get this to work?

It appears to be a problem with all SD cards over 1 GB. I'm running VectorLinux 5.8 SOHO and do not have a problem with mounting other media types.

cfdisk is able to see the card:

cfdisk 2.12r

Disk Drive: /dev/sdd
Size: 2032664576 bytes, 2032 MB
Heads: 32 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 1969

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sdd1 Boot Primary FAT16 2031.36
Pri/Log Free Space 1.04



Thank you,
Dan

First of all, you don't need the '-o loop' option when mounting a real drive. That option is used for mounting disk images sitting on an already mounted disk.

Also, it might be that your card reader simply can't handle large cards. I have an Epson printer with card slots, and I can't mount anything over 1GB either. I don't get error messages though, it just can't see them at all. The same cards do work with a different reader, however.

I concur.

I had a card reader that always give me error whenever I read a 2GD SD card. I initial thought the problem is something with my driver or maybe my SD card was faulty. Until one day I got myself a new reader, I did not know there is a size limitation.

By the way, the correct command should be:

If sda1 is the device for the SD card and /mnt is the target directory to mount. Change it according to suit your needs.

By the way, usbfs is not suppose to be used as a normal filesystem.

Read the entire proc_usb_info.txt in your Linux source Documentation/usb folder for more details.

I concur with the above, but I also had a strange problem with a SD Card that I could not read on my laptop either with windows or linux, I even thought it was a problem with my card reader, in the end I found the SD Card (from a photo machine) had no partitions and linux kernel was not very fond of it.

One day I tried with freebsd and work perfectly, I'm not saying you need FreeBsd, just check for your partittion table for you SD Card.

That's true. It is possible to have partitionless cards. But those are easily mounted by using the base device in the mount command; /dev/sda instead of /dev/sda1, or whatever.

In this case though, the opening post's cfdisk output shows that there is a good partition at sdd1, so it's probably not an issue here.

I tried the card on my work laptop X60 and it worked. I guess I'm in the market for a newer card reader, how do I shop for one?

Thanks for your input,
Dan

What kind of reader are you looking for exactly? I think the problems mostly come with older readers that were designed before multi-GB cards became available. Probably 90%+ of newer readers will work fine.

Directing you to a specific model is difficult because we can't be sure of what you want. I personally have a cheap usb multi-card reader I bought here in Japan (that doesn't seem to be available elsewhere, at least under that model number), as well as a Mutsumi internal floppy/card reader, and they both work perfectly. You should first look around for models that look good to you, then check to see if anybody else has had trouble with it. I think your chances of buying a bad reader off-the-shelf these days is pretty low however, and you can always return whatever you buy for exchange if you do hit the odd one out.

For that matter, It would be nice of you to post the model number of the reader you're using now as a warning for anyone else who might be having the same problems.

Thanks for the replies,

I have a USB IOGEAR Model# GFR280.

Dan

Solex,

I just tried my brand new 2G SD card in my GRF280 with no luck (Buffer I/O errors like mad).
But the SD reader on my HP printer (Photosmart 3210xi) reads it just fine.

So it looks like the GFR280 just might not be able to deal with cards that big.