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Ubuntu 18.04.3 didn't recognize my SD card. I don't have any error or any information pop up about reading the card. I thought I might not have the exFAT library, so i did:

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

But still doesn't recognize the card. Cards are visible in Windows and I have formatted them to exFAT. But this still doesn't solve the problem.

lsblk doesn't show my SD card.

The funny thing is that i have one SD card, a Sandisk Ultra 64GB, that Linux does actually see, but only 32 GB. So I don't understand what is going on.

The undetected SD cards are an SDXC Sandisk Extreme 128GB and a 64 GB V30 A2.

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    exFAT is not fully supported by the kernel, Microsoft released the full specs of exFAT just recently and now the full implementation is being merged to the kernel, you'll probably have to wait for a full exFAT support, it's supposed to work with Linux kernel 5.4 while the current one is 5.3 and Ubuntu Eoan Ermine is using 5.2, we're talking about 2020 for an Ubuntu version with full support, sorry :( – Yaron Oct 6 '19 at 10:52
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    @Yaron that smells like an answer to me ;) – Rinzwind Oct 6 '19 at 11:19
  • So could you please explain this to me, how is it possible that one SDXC is readable and other are not? – UMR Oct 7 '19 at 17:10
  • @UMR are you sure they are formatted exactly the same? – Yaron Oct 9 '19 at 7:38
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exFAT is not yet fully supported by the kernel.

Microsoft released the full specs of exFAT just recently and now the full implementation is being merged into the kernel, you'll probably have to wait for a full exFAT support, it's supposed to work with Linux kernel 5.4 while the current one is 5.3 and Ubuntu Eoan Ermine is using 5.2.

We're talking about 2020 for an Ubuntu version with full support.

sorry :(

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  • maybe i should ask other question. What file system should i format this SD card so the Linux could read it easily? – UMR Oct 7 '19 at 17:11
  • FAT32 sadly, unless you have files bigger than 4GB then you'll have to use ntfs or reFS (Windows 8 and above), I'm not sure f2fs is fully supported by Windows. – Yaron Oct 9 '19 at 7:36
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It is true that Linux exfat support is still limited, but as Yaron mentioned in his answer kernel 5.4 should support exfat. So, you could install a mainline kernel as per this Ubuntu wiki page to test if ex-fat is really supported.

In short you would have to:

  1. Download the mainline kernel you want to test from the ppa.
  2. Reboot your system and choosing the newly installed kernel in Grub.
  3. Test it thoroughly.

Be warned that this might cause problems with the system. So make sure to read the wiki page well before proceeding. That said, I've been using another distro that always has the latest kernel and never had serious issues. Having Ubuntu with a mainline kernel might be another story though. In the past I did once try a mainline kernel and didn't have issues either, but I may have been lucky.

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  • so is there any way to make use of my SD cards? maybe should i format them in windows to other file system? Idk, maybe Ext4, HFS ? Any ideas? please help me a bit. – UMR Oct 7 '19 at 17:14
  • If you're not bound to use ex-fat, you can format them in Linux to FAT32 or something else. – To Do Oct 7 '19 at 19:10
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The short answer is format the microSDX with FAT32 for now in a Windows based system or maybe even a Camera that reads SD cards. I tried many things, including https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/09/install-samsung-exfat-driver-ubuntu-ppa

My story: https://grn.dk/reading-samsung-exfat-k-ubuntu-1910

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