How can I make my microSD card writable?

Question

I have a macbook pro running Snow Leopard. I have Tuxera NTFS drivers.

I have a microSD card, in an adapter, in the slot. The "lock" slider is in the "unlocked" position.

'Get Info' tells me the drive is formatted to FAT16. The permissions panel tells me that I can only read.

Disk utility tells me it's not writable. (It does this for the volume and also for the higher level Apple SD Card Reader Media)

What do I need to do to change permissions to turn this card writable?

Answer 1

I've encountered the same. Ended up doing this:

1. Backup the SD Contents
2. Format the SD as FAT16 using Disk Utility and Terminal

following these steps:

1. Unmount (not eject) the SD from Disk Utility and copy the id (doing CMD+I on the SD and then selecting the Disk Identifier value (e.g. disk2s1))
2. Format to FAT16: sudo newfs_msdos -F 16 /DEV_PATH/TO_SDK so in my case: sudo newfs_msdos -F 16 /dev/disk2s1

HTH

Answer 2

I had a PNY 32gb SD Card. Spent hours trying to find out how to make it re-writeable. Well the answer is simple. The slider on the left side of the card must be "up" (the read-writable position) BUT ALSO the tiny "notch" opposite the slider must be covered with a piece of tape. It's really the opposite of the old video tapes, which we had to break the tab if we did not want anything recorded over it. But I can guarantee you I've bought a lot of SD cards and have NEVER had a card that was write-protected out of the package that required me to do anything but raise the slider on the left side.

Answer 3

Micro SD to SD adapters are even more unreliable than the card itself. I have noticed random behaviour (also on Macbook pro) just by reinserting the card without touching the lock and also after touching the lock.

I could not reproduce bmike's trick. He might have be fooled by such random behaviour. Please confirm.

I recommmend to use Micro SD to USB adapter: there is no switch and the contacts are better. Some cost like 1 € and are as big as a nail.

Answer 4

Had the same problem, I unmounted it using terminal, following this tutorial

https://superuser.com/questions/527657/how-do-you-format-a-2gb-sd-card-to-fat32-preferably-with-disk-utility

Answer 5

I had no clue why my sd card somehow got turned onto unwritable. I filled it up to 8/ 16 gigs n decided, OK I really need to fix this card now!

I finally recalled some cards can lock data. After a few flips n tests with the switch slides. I'm not finnaly able to delete again.

So simple. Built in lock mechanism on the actual card!

I tried reformating, no availablity, moving from card to desktop, changing options in each folder. But it was there the whole time.

Answer 6

Switch the lock mechanism on the physical SD card.