formatting old sdcard

F

FRIENDLY TROLL (WS)

New member
ok i'm feeling pretty stupid here. I just copied all the contents of my stock 4gb sdcard from my phone over to an older 8gb card i had laying around, since the 4gb was getting low on space. Everything went fine and the new(/older) card is working as it should.

but out of habit i wanted to format the 4gb card so it would be empty if i need to use it in the future. I can't get ubuntu or vista or my digital camera to recognize the card, yet if i put it in the phone it still works fine, however the phone's format sdcard option is greyed out and unable to be used.

what do i need to do get ubuntu (preferably) to recognize the disk so i can format it?
 
You could always shove it back in your phone, go to Menu -> Settings -> SD card & phone storage -> Unmount SD card, then Format SD card.
 
that worked for formatting it (for some reason earlier it wouldn't unmount, kept giving me check progress bar for unmounting progress, or something similar messages, but never actually unmounted)

but now how do i get ubuntu to recognize this if i want to use it for anything else?
 
How are you connecting the SD card with your PC? I take it it's a USB reader or built-in reader of some kind?

If it's a built-in reader you may need special drivers for it for Ubuntu.

If it's USB it should already be supported. You can then just plug the card in and Ubuntu will pop up an option to mount it.
 
It's a built in reader. however the 8gb card that i currently have in the phone recognizes instantly when i plug it into the same built in reader. Which leads me to think it's some sort of formatting that the nexus (android) does?
 
no it's the stock one on my nexus one, and i haven't rooted that.
gparted doesn't recognize it when it's plugged in.
neither does fdisk -l

I'm really being confused by this...
 
This has worked for me in the past, but it's for windows not ubuntu.
http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/sd/download/index.html
 
Well, I would have thought fdisk -l would have seen something on it, no matter how it was formatted.

You don't have to manually mount it do you?
 
So it's not the SD card then, it must be the reader. Yet the reader works with the other SD card...

By the way, Android won't unmount a SD card that's in use, so if one of your apps was using it at the time (even if it was just an open file) then it'll not unmount it. It might have unmounted later if that app had closed/finished.
 
Try reinstalling Ubuntu and reflashing your Nexus One ROM, and then replace the USB reader with a tomato. Shove the SD card into the tomato, and see if it mounts.
 
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