SD Clean/Mac

This is an add-on section for completely recreating an SD card's filesystem using Disk Utility. This should only be done if formatting does not fix your issue or is not possible for some reason.

This page is for Mac users only. If you are not on Mac, see the Windows and/or Linux pages instead.

Instructions

Before beginning these steps, copy all of your SD card's contents to a folder on your computer.

Terminal

1. Open the Terminal app.
2. Type diskutil list external physical, then find the SD card and take note of its disk name. It will look like disk2 or disk3.
3. Once you are sure of the SD card's disk name, type diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk#, where # is the number in the disk name you found.
   • If the system cannot unmount the disk, type diskutil unmountDisk /force /dev/disk# to forcibly unmount it.
4. Type diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 NAME MBRFormat /dev/disk#.
   • Replace # with the disk number, and replace NAME with any name that does not begin with 3ds.
5. Once the format is complete, copy your data back onto the SD card.

Disk Utility

Choose your macOS version, as the instructions differ between versions.

10.14 or higher10.11-10.1310.10 or lower

1. Double-click Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities folder.
2. Choose View > Show All Devices.
3. In the sidebar, select the storage device you want to erase, then click the Erase button.
4. Click the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose Master Boot Record.
   • If the Scheme pop-up menu is not available, make sure you selected the storage device you want to erase — it’s at the top of the hierarchy.
5. Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose MS-DOS (FAT)>.
6. Enter a name for the new partition.
7. Click Erase, then click Done.
8. Once the format is complete, copy your data back onto the SD card.

1. Double-click Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities folder.
2. Choose View > Show All Devices.
3. In the sidebar, select the storage device you want to erase.
4. Eject each volume on the disk (select the volume in the sidebar, then click the Eject button), then click the Erase button once all volumes are unmounted.
5. Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose MS-DOS (FAT)>.
6. Enter a name for the new partition.
7. Click Erase, then click Done.
8. Once the format is complete, copy your data back onto the SD card.

1. Navigate to Disk Utility. To do this, press Command + Space and search for "Disk Utility"
2. Select your SD card
3. Click Erase this option should be on the top
4. Name it whatever and make the format MS-DOS (FAT)
5. Click Erase then done.
6. Once the format is complete, copy your data back onto the SD card.