My passport is not recognizing microSD cards. I tried with 2 different ones, they work when I plug them into my PC so they are not broken.
This happened in the past as well, but it started working again.
Did anybody have the same issue?
Sorry to hear about this.
What action are you trying to perform when the device fails to read the SD?
Have you tried reformatting the cards on device? Note that this will erase all data on the SD, so proceed with caution!
So I have 3 microSD cards here. One is recognized by the Passport and two are not. I tested all of them on a laptop (airgapped Tails no worries) and they all work perfectly fine.
One of the cards that doesn’t work has my Passport backup files so I know for a fact that it used to work.
To test them on the Passport I tried signing a tx from SD card, exporting .json for Sparrow and I’ve also tried going to settings > advanced > list files.
What is weird is that the one micro SD that does work, when I insert it into the Passport I can feel a bit more resistance, like it’s a bit thicker, than the other two. I tried wiggling around the other two but that doesn’t help. But again, at least one of them used to work since it’s the one that has by Passport backup files.
I will use the one that works for now to sign txs and keep the other two for backups. If I ever have to restore I’ll have to shuffle the backup files between micro SD’s but it is what it is.
Ok so I have done some further testing, with a total of 4 micro SD cards and they are all working now.
I formatted them in Tails, and one that wasn’t recognized in Passport was able to be formatted by Passport (but then Passport froze, and I had to take out the battery, and when I plugged it into Tails it seemed to be encrypted, and then I formatted it there again, and now it’s all working…)
EDIT: ok so one of the cards stopped working with the Passport again. This card is only 256MB and is formatted with FAT 16-bit. The other ones are formatted FAT 32-bit and are 16GB, 16GB and 256GB respectively. I will blame the 16-bit formatted card and move on.
Thanks for the detailed info and solution. Should be helpful for other that might find themselves in a similar situation.
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I did check all documentation on the Foundation website. Could not see FAT32 requirement mentioned. I know there have been made an effort to make it easily understandable, however I believe this should be added to the guides.
To be clear, the FAT 16-bit formatted card did work in the past, so I do not think this is the issue.
I formatted all these micro SD cards with my laptop so it’s even possible that if you format them using Passport they will be 16-bit.
I think the issue here is a faulty micro SD card, not the 16-bit formatting.
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