SD cards become read-only on insertion
One of the most annoying features on standard SD cards is the write protect tab. This tab often seems to get caught and pushed into the “read only” position when one inserts an SD card into a card reader or camera. Thus rendering the card “read only”. It seems a particular issue with the slots on Lumix µ4/3 cameras. Fortunately however, there is a very cheap and easy fix that will prevent SD cards becoming read-only. A centimetre or two of kapton (or similar) tape wrapped over the write protect tap will prevent it sliding back on insertion of the card.
Method
- Clean the casing of the SD card with isopropanol or similar to clean off greasy finger marks. This ensures the tape has a nice clean surface to stick upon.
- Make sure the slider is in the “write” position before applying tape.
- Apply 10 mm – 20 mm tape over the slide, and wrap tape around card casing, as per the image below.
- Ensure the tape pressed firmly into the rebate on the side of the card, ringed in red in the image below.
Why kapton? You can use Sellotape, or any very thin adhesive tape. But kapton seems to last longest and it’s designed for use at high temperatures. SD cards can become quite warm under heavy use. Also, the non-sticky side of kapton tape is nice and slippery. So, providing you have applied the kapton tape correctly, the card still slides into the slot smoothly.
What about gluing it in place?
As an alterative, you can actually glue the tab in place with cyanoacrylate adhesive. But that is very fiddly and requires a blob of adhesive that is significantly smaller than most Superglue dispensers want to deliver. And you normally end up having to scrape the residue off the rebate on the side of the card – and probably off your fingers too. 🙂
About kapton
Kapton is quite interesting stuff and is used extensively in the electronics industry. I find it’s always handy to have a roll of kapton tape in one’s toolbox.
That tab isn’t like a switch. It’s up to the device you insert the card into to see or feel what position it is in and enable or disable writing appropriately. With tape over it, you don’t know what the device will decide it means.
Yes. It’s just a silly little piece of plastic. The switching is done on the reader itself, not on the card. However, the tape ensures that the silly little piece of plastic remains in the correct position for the reader to detect that the card is writable.
It’s similar, in principle, to when one used to put a piece of tape over the erase-protection tab hole on a Compact Cassette to make it recordable again, after the erase-protection tab had been knocked out.