[LAPTOP] Cannot access Multi-Card reader

[stuarte]

Hi,

I am having a problem accessing the Multi-Card reader within my system which is a Toshiba (branded) Satellite L870-18V laptop the spec's of which can be seen at https://ie.dynabook.com/discontinued...lite-l870-18v/ The system is running Kubuntu 20.04.1 fully/continuously updated.

As can be seen in the interfaces section, the card reader is capable of handling an SDXC™ Card up to 64 GB. I am using a SanDisk Ultra 64 GB card, as seen at https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/sd-cards/1747339 hosted within a SanDisk adapter.

When I cold boot the system, with the adapter in the reader, the system does seem to find it, as can be seen from the dmesg output. (see line commencing 4.000304 in the attached file dmesg.txt)

However, I am unable to access the card/reader. I did a trek around the interweb and found a site where it was advised to install udisks2. This I did and am still unable to access the card/reader.

I have also installed the Gnome Disks utility which recognised the Model as Generic_Multi-Card (1.00) and the Device as /dev/sdb. When I tried using Disks to format the card (this was not greyed out initially) Disks displayed an error window with the following text.

Error creating file system: Command-line `mkfs.vfat -I -n 'SD64GB''/dev/-sdb" exited with non-zero exit status 1:
stdout: mkfs.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
'
stderr: `mkfs.vfat : unable to open /dev/sdb: No medium found
'(udisks-error-quark, 0)

Another site suggested switching off DMA protection in the B.I.O.S. however, as far as I can tell, this system does not have DMA protection in the B.I.O.S.

Is there some other package that I need to install or a system setting that I need to tweak in order to access this card/reader ?

Stuart

[oshunluvr]

The probable answer is there in the last line of your dmesg output:

sdb: unable to read partition table

vfat, ntfs, extX, and most other file systems do not support full-disk formatting. A partition table is required.

If you're going to format this disk from the command line, you need to create a partition table first:

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

Then enter "n" for "New partition table" and accept all the defaults. Then enter "w" to "Write changes to disk".

Now you can format /dev/sdb1. Note that it's sdb1 not sdb.

If you use KDE Partition Manager, it should advise you to make a partition table before letting you format a file system.

[claydoh]

Does it do the same thing with other SD cards?
Or when using different sdcard adapters? I keep extras around as they can be spotty in my experience with laptop slots, even on new systems.

The reader could be dirty, or faulty, due to its age. This seems far more likely than any mis-configuration or something missing in your OS , since sdcards and readers have been well supported for about as long as they have existed, and normally work straight out of the box.
The erros I can't decipher, but I am leaning towards hardware problems, starting with the reader. then looking at the adapter, then the sdcard itself.

[claydoh]

tag#0 Add. Sense: Logical block address out of range

These erros and the others make me think the reader is bad/dirty or not making good contact with the slots on the adapter, etc

Something like this. among many examples:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...r-inserting-it