MyPW doesn't see SD card at all

I have attempted to import from SD Card by every method available (via the mobile app, via the PC desktop interface, triggered by pressing the WPS button, etc.) and in each case I get the equivalent of a message telling me there is no SD card inserted. I’ve checked that the card is inserted properly, tried different cards as well, but the MyPW simply will not recognize that a card is inserted.

Edit: Inserted SD card also can’t be accessed on desktop with direct connection accessing via Network > MyPassport > SD.  It can see the public volume but can’t find anything on the SD volume.

Is this a known issue with any sort of workaround, or do I have a defective drive?

Thank you,

Welcome to the community.

Maybe you should try contacting WD’s Technical Support about this. You can do so either by phone or email.

To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

Support by Country
http://support.wdc.com/country/index.asp

Regards,

ersouza wrote:

Is this a known issue with any sort of workaround, or do I have a defective drive?

Possible you have a defective drive, but first, what brand / size / type of SD card?  What file system format?  Etc.

I’ve tried a couple of different cards.  I have an 8GB Eye-Fi X2 card and then I’ve also tried a standard Sandisk SD card (64 GB).  I believe the file system is exFat on both.

Naturally, I’ll contact support if need to, but I figured I’d check with the community first to see if this is a known issue in any way.

I saw that problem for a little while after upgrading the firmware.

After rebooting the drive three times the problem disappeared. I don’t actually know if the reboots fixed the issue, or some other magic happened. YMMV.

1 Like

Try formatting one of the SD cards to FAT32   and see if that works.

RoderickGI, I think it is tied to the firmware upgrade somehow.  I performed the firmware upgrade this afternoon and after a reboot, *most* SD cards are now being recognized.  It’s still not recognizing the Eye-Fi X2 card at all, but 3 other standard SD cards have now been successfully recognized and imported.

exFAT has been adopted by the SD Card Association as the default file system for SDXC cards larger than 32  GiB.

All my 32GB and larger SD cards are formatted as exFAT, and will stay that way. It is the standard and should be fully supported by this drive.

Some workarounds are completely unacceptable. This is one of them.

RoderickGI wrote:

 

Some workarounds are completely unacceptable. This is one of them.

“What” is one of them?   No one pitched a workaround – only troubleshooting steps to see if his SD card slot was the issue.

I think his point was that asking me to reformat my sd cards is going a little beyond basic troubleshooting.  I’d like this device to work with my cards as they’re currently formatted, which has already proven compatible with numerous devices I own.  Not to mention the MyPW drive is ExFat formatted itself, so this shouldn’t even be the issue.

I’d love to know why it’s not working with the Eye-Fi card, but I can cut my losses on that one.  At this point every other card seems to be working and buying the MyPW was meant in part to be an alternate approach to using the Eye-Fi card anyway.

With the testing I have done and with my use of the MPW, I have had no problems with cards formatted with FAT12/16, FAT32, and exFAT. Many of the older, smaller cards were formatted FAT12/16, with the larger ones being formatted FAT32, and the larger SDHC and SDXC cards being formatted exFAT. 

Be care because when you format a card in a camera, you might have a ‘Low Level Format’ option that will format the card to a different file system. One of my Nikon V Series cameras will format the card as exFAT.

Of course, I do recommend that formatting a card when inserted into a camera. This avoids issues from the previous filesystem and files and allows you to have the max space of the card. Some cameras will put misc files on the card and doing a format will remove them. 

As for supported sizes and specifications, I know that I have used the following cards:

SD Cards <=2GB

SDHC Cards 4GB-32GB

SDXC Cards 64GB+

As for ‘Class’ or speed of the cards used, I have used everything from a Class 4+. The faster cards are backwards compatbile to the slower card readers.

As for Eye-Fi cards, I don’t understand how they might be useful with the MPW.

Are you just using the Eye-Fi card as another SD card with space or are you trying to use the Eye-Fi Wi-Fi to connect to something?

I have a couple Eye-Fi cards but I found with my camera, mostly using Compact Flash Cards, they don’t work well in the CF-SD Adapters, within the camera. I broke down and got the Canon WFT for Canon 7D and Canon 40D. I use the FTP support of the WFT to directly talk with the MPW’s FTP server to transfer photos (JPG and/or RAW). It was my understanding that the Eye-Fi Software and file transfer needs an internet connection to use their FTP Server Relay for FTP to work. I have not tried using the MPW, in Hot Spot Mode (connected to a internet connection, i.e. Starbucks Wi-Fi) with the Eye-Fi Cards. 

Enjoy!

By the way, I totally forgot to recommend that you update the latest FW for your MPW. I had problems with SD Cards with the first release, 1.1.x. There is some comment about SD support, in the change notes, for the new firmware.

I have had much better luck with SD Cards with the latest 1.2.17. 

Enjoy!

JoeySmyth wrote:

Try formatting one of the SD cards to FAT32   and see if that works.

ersouza wrote:

I think his point was that asking me to reformat my sd cards is going a little beyond basic troubleshooting.

 

Not to mention the MyPW drive is ExFat formatted itself, so this shouldn’t even be the issue.

 Exactly. I took the suggestion as converting to using FAT32. If you meant to run a test using FAT32, then okay. Although I don’t like to change format on my cards back and forth. Sometimes they just die without apparent reason if you fiddle with them.

Anyway, it appears with the latest firmware, and possibly a few reboots, exFAT is supported without trouble.