SD card not mounting in Ubuntu? Fix the no access issue!

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.