SD Card Read Issue

[slimreaper]

First world problem incoming...

I got the Mini about a month ago and am loving it. I purchased a new SD card (SanDisk Extreme 256GB) which is on DJIs recommended list. I also purchased a USB based card reader (SanDisk MobileMate USB 3.0). I formatted the card in the drone as recommended by DJI.

Footage and pictures record fine and I can download them without issue if I plug the drone into my Win 10 laptop. This is a bit of a pain however, as I have to power up the drone to do this which means unfolding the arms, removing camera cover, etc... This is the reason I purchased the standalone reader - so I can just pull the card and read off of it directly. The problem is that it won't work properly. The card is not recognized as having any files on it and says "Insert a disk" when I try to select it in Windows Explorer. I have tried reformatting it in Windows and then using it in the drone - footage records fine but I have the same issue when trying to read it back from the adapter. If I use the card/reader combo just to hold regular Windows files it works fine so the card/USB reader seem to be functional.

I have another more traditional card reader which works on another laptop but unfortunately I don't have the SD slot on this laptop so I can't use it. Again, the USB reader itself is fine - I can read a similar card from a GoPro without issue on this laptop. I have another reader adapter which takes SD cards but even when I go this route on this laptop there is no joy.

So it seems to me there is some issue with the formatting of the card or the way DJI writes files to it which does not play nice with Win 10. I have seen some references to this issue in other threads but no concrete solutions. Any help would be most appreciated

 

[DanMan32]

Something sounds screwy on that laptop, since you can read the SD with DJI files on it just fine on other laptops/PCs, if I understand you correctly.

I've never had issues reading DJI recorded SD cards on my PC using a card reader or my laptop with an SD slot. Reader takes micro SD and standard size SD, able to read card in micro slot, or standard slot using adapter. For laptop, slot is standard so I have to use an adapter.

I have had SD cards go bad that I used on my P3. Problems only appeared when I filled the card to a certain point, where the P3 would abort recordings.

 

[Meta4]

I got the Mini about a month ago and am loving it. I purchased a new SD card (SanDisk Extreme 256GB) which is on DJIs recommended list. I also purchased a USB based card reader (SanDisk MobileMate USB 3.0). I formatted the card in the drone as recommended by DJI.

So it seems to me there is some issue with the formatting of the card or the way DJI writes files to it which does not play nice with Win 10. I have seen some references to this issue in other threads but no concrete solutions.

I'll start with some simple points (because the core issue is hard to work out).
That card is much too big to be using in a drone.
You really don't want to be storing a whole holiday's work on one SD card.
It's too many eggs in one basket.

And there's nothing weird or unusual about DJI's formatting or writing to an SD card.
It's plain vanilla, industry standard stuff.

Footage and pictures record fine and I can download them without issue if I plug the drone into my Win 10 laptop. This is a bit of a pain however, as I have to power up the drone to do this which means unfolding the arms, removing camera cover, etc... This is the reason I purchased the standalone reader - so I can just pull the card and read off of it directly. The problem is that it won't work properly. The card is not recognized as having any files on it and says "Insert a disk" when I try to select it in Windows Explorer. I have tried reformatting it in Windows and then using it in the drone - footage records fine but I have the same issue when trying to read it back from the adapter. If I use the card/reader combo just to hold regular Windows files it works fine so the card/USB reader seem to be functional.

Your comments on the second laptop are confusing, so I'll concentrate on your Win 10 laptop.
There are 4 elements to the problem - camera, card, adapter, & computer

You've confirmed that:

Image files record to card and can be retrieved via cable​

Computer can't read image files from the card in adapter but can read computer files​

Have you tried a different card to see if the drone/card/adapter/computer works with that?

 

[THE CYBORG]

Something to try.
To test out the SD card & reader I would connect them to your PC, copy some video files from the PC to the card then play them from the card.
I always transfer all files from my 64 gig San Disk Extreme Pro U3 SD card to my Windows 10 PC then format the card as exFAT while still in the PC.
I have never had any problems doing it this way.

 

[Plainview]

Something sounds screwy on that laptop, since you can read the SD with DJI files on it just fine on other laptops/PCs, if I understand you correctly.

I've never had issues reading DJI recorded SD cards on my PC using a card reader or my laptop with an SD slot. Reader takes micro SD and standard size SD, able to read card in micro slot, or standard slot using adapter. For laptop, slot is standard so I have to use an adapter.

I have had SD cards go bad that I used on my P3. Problems only appeared when I filled the card to a certain point, where the P3 would abort recordings.

Was it a quality SD card?

 

[4wd]

This could be a windows issue rather than anything to do with the card.
Issues can crop up if you just pull the reader out without doing the eject routine - but it depends what was going on at the time so you might normally get away with it.
if you can see the drive at all you might have to re-assign a new drive letter to it (e.g. F:\ ).

 

[slimreaper]

Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone. Still no luck so I'm just going to have to live with this as is.

For the record, I tried the following:

• Reformatted the card in Windows 10 using the default (exFAT)
• Copied video files over from my hard drive to the SD card and could read/playback just fine
• Deleted video from SD card, replaced SD card in drone and recorded new video
• Plugged back into computer and same original issue - no drive letter recognized/nothing comes up/can't read files at all
• Could not even reformat the drive at this time using Win 10. Tried changing drive letters, updating drivers, reboots, etc... with no luck.
• Finally just put SD card back in the drone and reformatted using DJI Fly app. Back to original state (Windows cannot see the card so I just turn on drone and connect to the laptop, using same USB port as I was for the reader, and can download videos fine).

To address some of the other comments above:

• I don't have another card to try (but the card itself seems fine to me)
• Yes, I realize it's a big card - if I have anything special I'll make sure to download it straight away. This is all for personal vs. professional use anyway so not a huge deal. My videos aren't that great anyway
• I'm super careful about ejecting drives properly, not turning things off until recording is stopped, etc... so I don't think that is the issue.
• It's a SanDisk card and on DJI's recommended list so yes, a quality card. Reader is SanDisk as well FWIW.

Thanks for all the suggestions. If anybody else ever has this issue and figures it out I'd love to hear about how they fixed it. Good luck and happy flying to everyone!

 

[Meta4]

I don't have another card to try (but the card itself seems fine to me)

It seems that all your problems have been when using that particular card.
The way to tell whether the card is the problem is to test with a different card.

It's a SanDisk card and on DJI's recommended list so yes, a quality card. Reader is SanDisk as well FWIW.

Sandisk is also the most faked card out there because the genuine item is well respected.
Testing with another card is what you need to do to get to the bottom of this.