I have these cheap 128mb SD cards from AliExpress. I have a ESP8266 board with Micro SD card slot I designed and had fabricated. I am having trouble getting the SD card to initialize.
I have tried another card, and it works fine. So I know the electrical circuit is working correctly. It's all working on 3.3v. There's no pullup/down resistors. And there is a 100nf bypass cap on the 3.3v.
I have tried this 128mb card in a Windows and mac computer, and a digital microscope. There's no problem with them. and they are able to write/read.
The only odd thing I'm seeing that could help diagnose the problem is that the test.txt file I put on the card in windows, gets deleted when put into my project. the other files on the card don't get touched and remain on the card.
I found another post talking about changing the speed of the SPI, tried at 15mhz and 4mhz, and it didn't solve the problem.
Try deleting and making the main partition again. In Windows I use the free version of the Aomei Partition Manager. I have recovered some "bad" flash drives.
I have purchased dozens of modules from Ali Express, mostly ESP variations, and never a problem. (I don't recall ever buying memory devices). However, Ali Express is simply a storefront for thousands of vendors. Ali Express does not stock anything. If you have a bad experience, it's with the seller. Not Ali Express.
I tried the Aomei software. Deleted the partition, and recreated a new one. Still no luck. I tried a FAT32, and creation succeeded. Was able to write my test.txt in windows. Then tried with the circuit I made, and it didn't initialize. Tried connecting back to windows, and now Windows can't even see the drive.
I tried another card, partitioned to FAT16 (FAT) and it has the same problem as before; Windows can see it, but my circuit can't initialize the card, but the file is deleted! So strange.
And ya, mostly good experience with AliExpress here. Any issues I've had I get refunds. Maybe it's time to try with this, although it may be too late.