SD cards that work with Arduino SD card reader

Projects Programming
1

This is a major pain in the ar$e that I have not found a solution to.

The only solution I currently have to to keep buying random SD cards from ebay until I fluke some that work with the shields.

Someone out there is the huge Arduino community must have found a solution to this SURELY!

Formatting the cards with windows format, with disk manager and with SD Card formater app simply do not work with the the SD cards I have. Deleting patitions, re-creating them, formatting under as FAT volumes all do not work. Changing allocation sizes does not work.

This is no help: https://www.instructables.com/id/Format-USB-Flash-Drive-to-FATFAT16-not-FAT32/

The cards simply will not successfully initialise under the Arduino SD library.

Someone please give me another solution to this that works!

Software that DOES format them in a way will render them useable with the SD library.
A list of SD card makes and sizes that are known to work with the SD library (like the RPi list of useable SD cards)
Anything other then random purchases on ebay!

2

For what it's worth, I've only used V-GEN 2GB formatted FAT (Windows 7) and I've never had a problem.

3

What is the capacity of the cards that you are trying ?

4

At present 16MB, 128MB, 2GB.

And 8GB one that was in my RPi works however. But I have not the faintest idea why this one works but the above will not.

Does the size matter? Because there is no mention of any size, that I have seen, in any of the doco associated with any SD libraries.

5

Does the size matter?

I don't know. It was just a passing thought but as an 8GB one works then I imagine that a smaller one would too

6

I am through wasting my time with them - broke them all and binned them.

7

Seriously some one with a lot more money than I have needs to try a bunch of different SD cards and compile a god damned list of brands and sizes that are KNOWN to work with the SD library.

And put that list up on the Arduino website under the SD library doco.

This is bloody ridiculous that there is a total lack of valid info on this.

I cannot possibly be the only person that is having this problem.

8

The really infuriating thing is that all of the SD cards I binned work perfectly fine in the SD slot of my windows laptop.

So why doesn't anyone seem to know with any certainty or reliability why they wont work with the SD library.

9

Are you sure that the problem is the library and not the SD hardware ?

10

I think you better try a simple , commonly accepted sketch, in the principle of sd datalogger. ( If you dont want to use the analogread, make a small change and use instead some specific values) .

11

boylesg:
Seriously some one with a lot more money than I have needs to try a bunch of different SD cards and compile a god damned list of brands and sizes that are KNOWN to work with the SD library.

And put that list up on the Arduino website under the SD library doco.

This is bloody ridiculous that there is a total lack of valid info on this.

I cannot possibly be the only person that is having this problem.

Remember it is an open source library, and its free.

Rather than get annoyed because you have problems and suggest someone else should sort it out, why dont you ?

For what its worth I have the odd problem with SD cards, but mostly they just work.