Issues with getting new SD cards to work with printer
Hi,
A couple of months back I bought a used MK2/S as a first 3D printer and have been playing around with it. FW is 3.2.3 which seems to be the latest looking at the forum sticky.
It came with an 8BG SD card that I have been using with a standard USB to SD adapter to transfer gcode files generated in Prusa Slicer on my desktop. So far I have had no issues with the card's connection to the printer. No cases of aborted prints and unexpected "NO CARD" messages so far. However, I wanted to have a backup card to give more flexibility and in case the old card died so I first got a 32 GB MicroSD card in an adapter, formatted and it did not work. Read about some people having issues with Micro+Adapter setups so instead got another 8GB regular SD card. Same thing.
Old Card: Kingston SDHC 8GB Class 4 (the 8GB version listed here, appears to have been replaced with another product number nowadays, link)
New 32GB: Verbatim Micro SDHC Pro 32 GB V30 Class 10 (with verbatim included Micro to SD adapater, link)
New 8GB: Intenso SDHC 8GB Class 10 (link).
When I say "did not work" here what I mean is that the printer recognizes that a card is mechanically inserted and shows the "CARD INSERTED" on the info screen. However, it does not show the "sorting files" message, just a half-second generic "dotted progress bar". Going into the settings to start a print I am just greeted with a "No SD Card" information. No "wiggling" or stepwise retraction of the new cards gives any result and as previously stated, the card that came with the printer has never show any signs of poor contacting.
This implies to me that there is nothing mechanically wrong but should instead be something with the formatting of the card that makes it unreadable.
I have looked around both Prusa's official Q&A for dealing with this, the forum and generally looking via Google (which often ends up on Reddit) and tried a variety of approaches but I still cannot get the printer to recognize either of my new SD cards. Frankly I am stumped with how to proceed.
A summary of what I have tried so far:
- Just a normal "quick format" in windows to FAT. Both just right clicking and going through the Disk Management interface. Not that it should matter but why no try.
- The same thing but with "quick format" unchecked.
- Going into the Diskpart utility to clean and force the partition table setup to MBR rather than GPT. Also formatting directly through Diskpart on the off chance that the GUI functionality in windows was resetting to GPT. Seems to be no way in the GUI to force/set the partition table for an SD card.
- Quick and slow formatting via the SD Memory Card Association application.
- Low level wipe/format with AOMEI partition assistant
Cards work perfectly when in the card reader for the desktop but despite everything I have tried, no files are shown when connecting to the printer.
The only thing I can think of as a difference is the actual HW of the cards and there somehow being an issue with either Class 10 SDHC cards or that the Verbatim/Intenso cards are just plain bad. However, I have found nothing in my searching that indicates there should be any such issues. So does anyone have any good advice for things I might not have tried yet? Or a recommendation for known good SD cards that just work "out of the box"?
Thanks in advance!
Some sources I have looked at and that might be relevant as background:- Mechanical Issues (this does not seem like the case here)
- Official Guides:
https://help.prusa3d.com/article/sd-card-not-working_2095
https://help.prusa3d.com/article/sd-cards-and-usb-drives_112291
- General Info concerning formatting and capacity
https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/original-prusa-i3-mk2-s-others-archive/creating-a-spare-sd-card/
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/sd-memory-card-formatter-for-windows-download/
https://www.diskpart.com/articles/low-level-format-sd-card-1984.html
Two possibilities:
Use VFAT format; some formatters have trouble setting up high capacity cards but your 8GB card should be OK.
For simplicity stick with ASCII text filenames and use only alphanumerics, no accented characters and no punctuation or spacing; there is a list of acceptable characters somewhere but I have lost track of it...
Cheerio,
RE: Issues with getting new SD cards to work with printer
@Diem. Thanks for the answer, concerning the second point, this should not be an issue as the SD-card that came with the printer is capable of listing the same files. This has more to do with general SD-card recognition than individual files not being read.
Concerning VFAT, I'm not quite sure what the advice is here. The only context I can find for VFAT concerns the Linux commands/utilities for formatting drives. I cannot find any sort of VFAT utility for Windows and some reading seems to imply that VFAT and FAT32 are basically the same so I'm not quite sure how to act on your advice.
It's over 15 years since I last used Windows in anger ... back then VFAT was the new Microsoft standard updating the old 16bit limitations, so much so that almost all the removable interface manufacturers were forced to use it and it has stuck; practically anything can use it but with size limits. If the current Windows formatters won't let you use VFAT try loading a legacy formatter. I have never had any issues with VFAT formatted drives on my printers other than having to replace a worn-out SD socket on my Mk3. FAT32 aIui, is a bit more temperamental but useable - just don't use it as your main file-store, rotate the current two or three files on and off the drive and use your computer as the repository, expect to have to reformat from time to time.
Cheerio,