Raspberry Pi OS Imager does not find SD card

[buckeyejim]

I am attempting to put together a guide for a group of seniors locally on the procedure to install an image to an SD card on the Windows system we use for various training purposes. It is a Windows 10 Pro system, all up to date.

I have downloaded the Imager for Windows and installed it on the system. This particular tower system has a full size SD card slot, so I use a carrier with a micro sd card on board. When I run the Imager, it asks for an OS and I choose Raspberry Pi OS and then the Imager shows a list of USB attached disk drives, but no sd card. Exiting and opening up This PC, I can see all the USB drives the Imager displayed and I can see the sd card, can open it, format it, etc. but the Imager cannot find it.

So I removed the sd card carrier with the micro sd card, plugged in a USB card reader with two slots that will read micro and regular SD cards, start the Imager and it still cannot find an SD card, but as before, the micro sd card shows up in This PC and I can formati it , so I know Windows knows about this.

Can anyone tell me what is going on here? I really would like to have my students use the Imager so I don't have to further confuse them with a download.

Jim Thompson

[kerry_s]

the sdcard has to be formatted fat32, for some reason some sdcards come formatted exfat for phones/android.

[drgeoff]

the sdcard has to be formatted fat32, for some reason some sdcards come formatted exfat for phones/android.

The "some reason" is that the standard for cards larger than 32 Gbyte is exFAT.

[B.Goode]

the sdcard has to be formatted fat32, for some reason some sdcards come formatted exfat for phones/android.

Is that a fact?


Why does an imaging tool need to have any prior knowledge of the existing content of the card?

[Burngate]

Could it be that both the tower's slot and the USB card reader aren't SDXC compatible? They can read but not write?

[pcmanbob]

When you go to select the drive to write too and you cant see the SD card try scrolling down with the mouse wheel you might find the
SD card/drive will then appear.

It does not matter how the SD card if formatted writing an image directly to the SD card is going to over write what ever is on the SD card anyway.

[fruitoftheloom]

Could it be that both the tower's slot and the USB card reader aren't SDXC compatible? They can read but not write?

Yes that has caught many posters out, buy a new USB Card Reader which states it supports SDXC.

[incognitum]

I have downloaded the Imager for Windows and installed it on the system. This particular tower system has a full size SD card slot, so I use a carrier with a micro sd card on board.

Double check the carrier is not write-protected. (switch must be upwards towards golden contacts)
Imager hides drives that are read-only.

When I run the Imager, it asks for an OS and I choose Raspberry Pi OS and then the Imager shows a list of USB attached disk drives, but no sd card.

If there are multiple drives, try scrolling your mouse wheel, to make sure there are no extra items hiding out of sight at the bottom of the list.
Or detach other drives.

[buckeyejim]

Thanks for all the responses. In reading them, it is clear I was not specific about the SD cards in question. Let me clarify:
all our SD cards are SDHC 16 GB Class 10. In fact they show up in This PC as SDHC. I don't want any of the students doing anything that requires more than 16GB. They can do whatever they want after my class, but the 16 size is great for our purposes.
Any of the cards we tried were formatted to FAT32. The carrier card we used did not have the write protect on as we could format the card and copy files to it and delete them. When using the card reader, there was no way I saw that one could write protect a microSD card. We also formatted the card, copied files to it and deleted them.

The one question I cannot answer is about the SDXC compatibility, but I can find nowhere in the Raspberry Pi website that says the card must be SDXC compliant to work with Imager. Since it is 16GB and SDXC (as I understand, is for SD card capacities of 32 GB and higher), I did not think that would matter. Etcher and Win32diskimager both will write images to these cards. I do understand they are different applications, but I can't see what difference it makes whether it is SDXC, SDHC or any other standard as long as I don't try to exceed the specifications of the standard. Someone please educate me here.
When presented with the choices of destination for the Imager, there is no scrolling down further. Only 4 selections are shown and there is no scroll bar at the side of the window, so there are no others.

Any more ideas?

I am going to try to get to another Windows system this weekend and see what happens on that system. I will; post my results when I get them. Thanks again.

[incognitum]

When presented with the choices of destination for the Imager, there is no scrolling down further. Only 4 selections are shown and there is no scroll bar at the side of the window, so there are no others.

The title bar of the Imager program does say you are using "Imager v1.3"?
(As in v1.2 the scrollbar will only appear after you use the scroll wheel of your mouse, not before).

[drgeoff]

... and SDXC (as I understand, is for SD card capacities of 32 GB and higher)

FYI. SDXC starts at 64 Gbyte.

[FTrevorGowen]

...
but I can't see what difference it makes whether it is SDXC, SDHC or any other standard as long as I don't try to exceed the specifications of the standard. Someone please educate me here.
...

To clarify: Historically SDHC and (probably also, but not absolutely confirmed) SDXC hardware compatibility has happened first in cameras (later "camera phones") before "card slots" in netbooks, laptops, tablets etc. This led, at least for SDHC, to some SD card manufacturers offering USB-based card readers/writers packaged with the cards.** and, when someone appears to have a problem writing to a uSDHC or uSDXC card that "physical" compatibility is one of the things queried. Unfortunately in my and others experience very few netbooks, laptops, tablets etc. are explicitly labelled as SDHC/SDXC compatible whereas many cameras and USB-based readers/writers are.
Trev.
** FWIW Some examples can be seen here: https://www.cpmspectrepi.uk/raspberry_p ... cards.html
and here: https://www.cpmspectrepi.uk/raspberry_p ... aders.html

[buckeyejim]

I had a chance to try the Imager on another Windows 10 computer, 2 to be exact. One is 8 years old` the otgher is 2 years old - just to put some perspective on what I found.
The Imager works on both platforms. The 8 year old system does NOT support SDXC but still writes the Raspberry Pi OS on an SDHC card without a hitch. The 2 year old system does support SDXC and thus writes the SDHC card fine also. In both systems I tried the Imager in the SD slot, in a USB SDHC card reader and in a USB SDXC card reader. All giot the same results.
So the conclusion I would come to is that if you are just writing an SDHC card then it doesn't matter if your system supports SDXC or not.

So I went back to the Ed center and just for kicks, rebooted the system before I tried to duplicate the problem once again. This time, everything worked fine. The Windows system did not show the SDHC card, so I scrolled down and there it was at the bottom to my surprise, because we could NOT scroll the list before. Windows got me again, but I would have expected something like this to happen on earlier versions, not the current one. Why didn't we boot it last week? It is a public system and there are safeguards to prevent just anyone from booting and we don't boot while unauthorized eyes are looking on.

Sorry for taking your time, bnt we do appreciate the support provided by this group. Thanks.