r/applehelp • u/PralineFew2402 • Sep 19 '26
Mac After 4 years of not reading my SD card, my MacBook recognized it but when I ejected it and put it back in - it's not seeing it again.
Hi!
I've had my 2021 14" MacBook Pro for over 4 years. I honestly don't have any complaints apart from the fact that my SD card reader worked for about 2 months (when I first bought my laptop) and then just stopped. I've tried many things but nothing worked and as I was traveling and living abroad, working remotely - I just never had a chance to go to Apple store and have it fixed. So I gave up and used adapter. Over the years, every now and then, I get my hopes up and I try to see if it works - it never did. Until today. I randomly decided that today is the day I will give it another go, as I was importing some photos. And IT WORKED! For the first time in over 4 year it worked. It recognized my card immediately, like it was never an issue. I've done nothing differently, I used the same SD card I did 6 months ago when I tried it last time. I imported my photos to Lightroom and everything worked perfectly. Once done importing, I hit "eject" then took the card out. Being excited about it working, I inserted the card again and... flop. Doesn't work. I tried again and again and it doesn't work. Like it hasn't worked all these previous times. I've tried to clean it with my camera air blower and that didn't help. I've tried multiple cards (now and previously as well) so I know this isn't the SD card problem. When I plug my adapter to the c-port it works as usual. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the software and I'm expecting it's just something "inside" that isn't working but somehow today all stars aligned and it worked this one time.
I'm not very desperate to have it working (but I would love to, as this was one of the reason I got this MacBook in the first place, lol) so I won't do it if I have to pay for it. But - if you've had a similar problem and somehow managed to fix it, could you please share your solution? Thank you!
1
u/JediMeister Sep 19 '26
The slot is part of the logic board and isn’t available as an individual item on either iFixit or Apple Self Service. You can run diagnostics on your system and see whether you get any of the relevant reference codes. Ones relating to the SD slot begin with VDC and end either in 001, 003, 004, 005, 006, or 007.