I have a V4 camera and I’m using 64gb sd card. I formatted the card in the camera recently and I want to get some files off of the card. When I put it in my usb 2.0 card reader on my Mac mini it says “the disk you attached was not readable by this computer” I have other cameras with 32gb and they read fine. Any suggestions?
Is it readable in the cam? If so try another adapter in the computer, or reseat it etc. did you do the safe eject when removing from the cam?
Yes it’s readable in the camera. No I didn’t eject it, I unplugged the camera and brought it inside to read it. Did the same to the other 2 cameras with the 32gb cards. I don’t have another reader at the moment. If that’s the problem I will get another one. Just wondering if there’s a problem with file format being it’s 64gb.
Cards above 32GB usually get exFAT file system, but not sure if that’s what the cam uses when it formats. But Macs should handle exFAT fine.
If it is a really old card reader it may have some sort of limitation, possibly not compatible with SDXC cards?
Hopefully you didn’t corrupt the SD card. Or get cross-linked files.
That is worst than ejecting it without going through soft eject in the app As a Mac user you should know that it is bad to just unplug removable media.
I ended up using the disk utility to create disk image and it worked fine when I opened the image. Thanks for the responses.
Just a question on what you said above. I’m new to the Mac world, I’ve always been a windows user. Anyway I’m trying to understand how pulling the power and then removing card would hurt. The power can go out at any time so would you need to wait until power is back and then eject card. What if your power is out and you need the footage?
You never kill power to a device or force eject it without having the OS finish the task. If you eject the card by pressing the eject button on the camera or pulling the cord you risk corrupting the card. The reason there is an “eject button” in the app is to make sure that whatever file is being written has finished before you physically remove the card. I mentioned Mac, because Macs never had a physical eject button for floppy drives, CD/DVD drives. The ejecting is done by either dragging the disk on top of the trash can that will change from trash to eject icon or right clicking the drive and selecting eject from the drop down menu. Same goes for shutting down the computer, you don’t just flip the switch or yank the power cord, you select shut down first from the menu bar. I hope this makes sense.
When the power goes out on its own, that is unfortunate and you run a risk of corrupting whatever runs on the device that loses power. That is not what I was referring to.
Adding to habib’s explanation, I/O is a 2-step process; first you write to a RAM/memory buffer, and when that buffer is nearly full, you write it out to an actual device. habib already covered that part about interrupting the actual I/O. Even when there’s no active I/O, you still lose data when the power is cut, because data in the buffer is lost. This is why you see posts here wondering about teleporting rabbits.
Yes, there’s always that risk, but it’s small chance. You can minimize that risk by safely ejecting the card.
When the power is out, you can take the card out. There’s no additional risk; if there’s a damage, it has already been done.
Thanks for the reply.
This isn’t exclusive to Mac. PCs also have a “safely remove” button for pretty much any USB device but it is extra critical for memory devices.
Yes it will happen from time to time when your power goes out, you can’t avoid that other than using a UPS (which I do on all computers and network equipment, but only a couple cams). In those cases you can usually recover the card by repairing it, but nothing is guaranteed, and often once you’ve gotten what you need off it, you need to format it.
It all depends where it was in the writing cycle, just starting or finishing writing a file is the worst time to pull the plug, but you have no way of knowing where it is in the cycle.
Thanks for the reply.
I normally use the eject when using them in the computer whether Mac or windows. I was just wondering about cutting the power to the camera and then removing the card. I appreciate the explanations above.
That is correct. I was under the impression that @drj2171 is a long time Mac user and we never ever unplugged external devices without dragging them to the trash first. If I remember correctly back in the days of floppy drives, on a PC all you had to do is hit the button on the drive and the system will automatically finish the I/O task and eject the floppy. We didn’t have such buttons. Here is the front of my dual DVD burner MacPro server with no buttons. Opening and closing of the drives is controlled via software. Steve Jobs hated on/off buttons
Nah the floppy drives on PCs were mechanical buttons (or the latch if it was 5.25"), you definitely didn’t push it if the light was on as it would eject and corrupt. For whatever reason I still have a USB 3.5" floppy drive and a few disks laying around “just in case”. There was a time that you needed that to do BIOS recovery and the like but everything after 2005 or so can boot of a USB thumb drive for that. A couple of the old PCs in the closet have internal ones too.
I do recall working with old macs that had no floppy eject, you dragged it to the trash and it popped out. Until that mechanism died anyway, then you needed a paperclip.
Optical drives on PCs can be ejected from the OS but also have a button. They would not eject if they were in the middle of burning. Actually I still have several with optical drives so I should use present tense.
I just got a free top of the line Dell Precision off Facebook, they said it was “old” and “doesn’t work” but its a 12th gen intel i9K so only a few years old and probably cost around $3000 new. Someone just pulled the SSD out for security I’m assuming. Slapped one in and it works fine. Finally can retire my 2008 era Core 2 Quad. Funny thing is the old one just does NAS and is hooked up to a TV so I can watch stuff on that easily, so it is plenty for that, but it draws 3x the power of the new 16 core one Well, if I pushed it to its limit I’m sure it would make the meter spin, but that doesn’t happen often.
I stand corrected then
You also need a paper clip to eject CD’s if the CD got stuck. You could also reboot and hold the C key to eject it.
Same on a Mac.
I have two machines like the one above, totally four optical drives. Probably the laser lenses are shut due to dust accumulation. Can’t remember when was the last time I used them.
Same here, the one in the picture is on 24/7 and the only intensive thing that it does is Plex, which is not that intensive. The other one gets turned on occasionally, mostly for testing purposes.
Even though the power here isn’t too bad (up to around 25c per KwH now) I’m still pretty conscious of anything that runs for long periods of time. My little home web server has been tuned to use around 15W on average. My old desktop that I referenced only gets turned on for scheduled backups or when needed for something else, and goes back to sleep 30 mins later.
This new desktop I just got they had taken the discrete graphics card out of it (likely a nice one worth a decent amount that they wanted to use in a new PC) but honestly the onboard intel graphics are plenty for what I do and draw a lot less power. It pains me to use onboard graphics, mostly just out of principle, this might be the first time in decades I’ve done that, even my laptop has a discrete chip in it. But no sense in drawing a bunch of extra power when I’m not doing gaming or heavy graphics/video editing, and the onboard has dual display ports. And hey according to benchmarks it slightly outperforms the discrete card in that old desktop, so still technically an upgrade. 99% of the time I use that desktop it is headless/remote anyway.
I have no idea what my Mac is using, have no Kill A Watt or anything like that, but I am pretty sure it draws more than that. It has dual quad core Xeon processors, bit overkill for what it does, but I hate throwing it away.
I use both in headless mode even though I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse attached to one. It’s much easier than turning around and reaching over to the other side of the desk.
I don’t need much power for my home servers. At most, they’re 5 watts each. I think each LED light on my garden lighting uses 5 watts.