Micro SD Card Wont Format

Are you having problems formatting your MicroSD card in Windows 7 Home Premium? It took me two days to figure out and my solution was ridiculously silly and easy.

Here is what happened (or skip to solution below) . I had put in an adata micro sd card into an adaptor, and put that into the micro SD adaptor slot on my computer. At first, it was telling me:

"windows cannot format this disk".

(However, I knew it was formatting, as I had tried two different disks, a 1g and a 2g, and the one from my blackberry was erased during this supposedly "not working" format! :-(

I was told to try changing the drive to another letter, so I changed e: to y: (didn't work). I was told to format the disk from the disk manager which somehow I was able to do, even though my disk manager could not see y: (my 2g disk) at ALL! Then when I would go to "my computer" and click on the micro sd drive, I only got this message:

When I go to "my computer" -> Removable Disk Y, it tells me:

"Please insert a disk into removable disk (y:)"

So now the disk could not be recognized at all!

People said that the the memory disk was bad, which wasn't true (firstly, I just bought it; secondly, my disk from my blackberry, which I KNOW still works, got the same error code if I put it into the reader and plugged it into the computer.

OK so how was I going to get windows 7 premium to recognize my microsd disk and adaptor?

I gave myself an administrator account and downloaded an HP Disk Formatting program - no avail. But FORTUNATELY this program told me "this disk cannot be read, it is write protected" - ok, write protected? uh oh.... *Blush*

(Solution below)

OK So finding that the disk was write protected (I'd had other error messages saying "this disk is READ ONLY" but I didn't know what that meant) gave me the solution.

If your micro SD card is read only, or it says it is "write protected" or if your micro SD card doesn't show up in the disk manager, or it can't be "seen" and if you can't format it, your adaptor may be locked.

I took my adaptor straight from the package, and put it in the computer thinking that's how it should be. But apparently the adaptor (shown in the photo) comes in a "locked" or "read only" position possibly so you don't erase your disk the second you put it in your computer. So what you need to do, is look on the side of your sd card reader, for the button that says "LOCK" then press it into the OTHER position so that it is "UNLOCKED."

This should allow you to format your micro SD card, read it, recognize it, and it will show up. Mine now works fine, two days of hell later (argh!)

**UPDATE*** TROUBLESHOOTING NOTE:

Windows 7 is STILL giving me problems reading the card. I will still sometimes click the card and it says :

"Please insert a disk into Y:"

IF this happens, so far I've discovered the solution to be:

1) Right click on on the disk icon in -> My Computer

2) Select and click on "Eject"

3) Physically Remove the MicroSD card reader/adaptor

4) Slide the lock, down, then up, make sure it is securely in the "up" position.

5) Re-insert, check on ->computer -> (your removable drve)

It should be accessible now - I have to do this routinely to get windows to recognize the card. Technology interfacing is getting so ridiculuous! Should have stopped at XP Bill!! Grrrrrrrr...........

IF you have accidentally removed your MicroSD card without clicking "eject" first, and therfore corrupted all of your data and files, please check out THIS EXCELLENT hub on how to recover the corrupted files (but try not to do that please!)

Hope that helps, leave comments if it doesnt.