D@mn I hate SD cards, mine's useless because of a broken switch (HELP!!)

[jlp]

The title says it all.

With those ever decreasing size in memory cards a tiny little lock switch that gets broken and your card is a quasi useless read-only media.

It looks like the switch itself is not useful to the card itself (it's not a switch that acts on the card's electronics), but like floppies and tapes there's a sensor in the drive itself that reads the switch position.

Recently I happen to put my PDA SD card in my SD slotted digicam and since those devices get smaller all the time too the space inside the slot is very tight. Inasmuch as I couldn't get the card out of my digicam.

So I gently pushed it back in and tried to pull it out again. I did that manoeuvre a few times and pull it out with a little force.

It happens that it was the lock switch on the card that got stuck and it broke while I pulled the card out tho I did it as gently as I could.

So now without the switch (which was hard as h@!! to find on the floor as well!!!) all my devices don't sense the switch in the write position "thinking" it's in the lock position.

So now my 256 MB SD card is a stupid read only media.

Well it happens that I put all my programs in my PDA internal memory and my data on the card (I had several bad experiences of my PDAs dying on me so I lost all the data since last sync).

I tried to glue what is left of the lock switch with some rapid glue... that's not so rapid: after many minutes the glue's still not hard. So I don't know if it's efficient on that kind of plastics the card body and switch are made of!?!

Any suggestions to get my card write capable again?!!!

.

[PetiteFlower]

Yeah call the manufacturer and try to get a replacement.

[Cortex]

the same thing happened to my 64 MB SD card some time ago. i used it as an excuse to move up to a 128 (just as the card manufacturers wanted) but there it sits on my desk.... useless....

ive thought about glueing a piece of a toothpick to it to see if i could get it to work....

[Steven Cedrone]

Hmmm...

I thought the switch closed a contact in the card making it read only or writable...

Why don't one of you open up your "useless" cards and let us know... :wink:

Steve

[jeff]

When we wanted to write protect 5.25" floppies back in the day, we put a piece of tape over the notch on the side. Have you tried that on your SD card?

[Janak Parekh]

When we wanted to write protect 5.25" floppies back in the day, we put a piece of tape over the notch on the side. Have you tried that on your SD card?
Will not help. :( The 5.25" drives had an IR reader. SD cards don't use the "gap" to determine whether or not a card is protected; as Steve said, it closes a contact on the PCB.

--janak

[jlp]

First of all I must confirm that the switch is purely passive!! (also read at the link below)

Indeed, first I closely examined my PQI SD card: the switch just wraps around a recessed part, top, side and bottom and fits in 2 grooves top and bottom; there's strictly no connection inside the card whatsoever. I know the Sandisk cards have their switch sandwiched inside the card, but it's just to make it simpler than PQI's.

Another hint is on my PQI card: after a good night's wait, the glue finally hardened (I also added some Araldit glue to make up for the broken part and to consolidate the setup). I just filed the extra glue and now my card works perfectly again.

Closing the gap with a tape might work in loose SD slots:
http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91812&highlight=Write+SD+Card

But my digicam SD slot is way too tight; this is why it broke the (recessed!!) switch in the first place.