Operating Systems > macOS

FAT16 SD card problems with the internal MBP reader

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davidnix71:
There is no legal free support in Linux or OSX for FAT16 (MS patents, I'm told). That makes the built-in SD card reader of little use on the MBP. If you insert and try to use a FAT16 sd card OSX will eventually fsck up the filing system and mark it "dirty" even though it isn't. Even Terminal can't fix it after that happens. The usual fix is to put it a camera and reformat.

I went to CompUSA and bought a $10 generic USB card reader and put a SanDisk sd card the internal would not read and in the external adapter it would allow me to read/write/format. Fvck you MS, and Apple, too. If I can do it in an external and not the internal without any extra software, both of you svck.

bedouin:
Have you tried formatting it FAT32 on the Mac and then using it in whatever device you're using it with?

I have a couple pieces of musical gear that claim to only support FAT16, but FAT32 was added unannounced in a firmware update later on.

davidnix71:
I did some more checking today and the card I reformatted won't fully work in the Mac again.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2166984?start=0&tstart=0 Scroll down to the bottom.

If I flip the lock switch back and forth and toggle the chip a bit it changes from read only to read and write.

Apparently Apple has some cheap sh1t internal card readers and they don't want to own up to it. Although it really doesn't make sense to crack open a laptop to replace a part that retails for less than $10 as an external device.

 The external reader works perfectly. I guess that means I need to keep it handy.

piratePenguin:
No legal free software - that you can distribute - in the US.

(and probably more places)

Aloone_Jonez:
As far as I'm aware the patent only applies to long file names, it's still legal to use the old 8.3 DOS file naming convention.

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