Every now and then some strange things happen. Basic daily tasks such as able to read DVD, Flash drives, memory cards, etc., which one expects to work without hurdles may refuse to work even on a modern PC. Today, we shall see one such issue and learn how to fix it. This is about the SD card not mounting issue, which is commonly seen in Ubuntu and derivatives including Linux Mint, and elementary OS.
exFAT SD card access error
Did you end up with this error while plugging the MicroSD card from Camera to read the photos in it? The error might resembles as follows:
Error mounting /dev/mmcblkop1 at /media/….. exited with non-zero exit status 32:mount: /media/….: unknown filesystem type ‘exfat’.
The access issue doesn’t occur in all memory cards. It happens with certain memory cards that typically of larger capacity. They are formatted with exFAT format. In recent years, memory cards have grown giant in the memory capacity. Modern memory cards are as large as 64GB to 128GB capacity. This is possible due to introduction of a new file system “exFAT”, in addition to long living FAT, FAT32, and NTFS file systems.
Fixing SD card not mounting issue
The access issue pops-up in Ubuntu because of not having the exFAT drivers. Installing those drivers should fix the issue.
Step 1) Unplug the memory card that you were trying to access. Don’t worry. SInce it is not mounted, there is no change to lose data. You can simply pull it out of slot.
Step 2) Launch ‘Terminal’.
Step 3) Enter the following command and hit enter.
sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils
Step 3) You must enter root password for installation to be successful.
Step 4) After the installation is complete, insert the SD card, and open the “Files”. You should be able to access the contents now.
Did it work for you? Do share your experience in the below comments.
I have a 64GB flash drive that use exFAT and I was searching far and wide to get my Ubuntu machine to mount the flash because only Mac and Windows machines picked it up. I’m so glad I came across this website. Thanks a million!!
Hello. Just installed Ubuntu 18.04 and, amazingly, my old internal 4-in-1 internal card reader did no longer see my old 2 GB Compact Flash card, although I tried tu remove and reinsert it several times! But just iInstalling exfat-fuse and exfat-utils has resolved the issue! Thank you very much for this hint!
Its work on 18.04. Thanks!
Great! It worked on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. After so much trouble it’s finally solved and I can now download photos and videos from a 64 GB
sd card. Utterly happy with the fix. Neat and quick. Thanks a lot.
Great fix and enormous help. Thanks a lot, it finally worked for Ubuntu!
Thank you so much! This worked perfectly for me. Linux Mint 17, and SD card from camera.
This didnt work for me on 18.04
I would be grateful if someone could guide me through how to fix this. Using Ubuntu 18.04
It worked for after upgrading to 18.04 as it did for erstwhile version 16.04
it worked for 18.04 and earlier 16.04