Ubuntu problem reading sd card

[spoddynerd]

I am running Ubuntu 11.04 on a Desktop.
I have an external USB 2.0 Dazzle Hi Speed SD card reader.
Using this reader, I can view the contents of SD cards which are 2.0gb and below, but not 4gb and above, i.e. SDHC/ high capacity cards. For 4GB cards, the OS reports that the card is blank, and does not give an indication of its size.

I have tried the same external reader with these card sizes on a Windows box, and it works fine.

I have also tried the same external reader with these card sizes on someone else's laptop (different hardware) running Ubuntu 11.04, and I get the same problem, i.e. SDSC ok, SDHC not ok.

Is this a known problem with Ubuntu?

 

[Noway2]

I am not aware of any problems with reading larger SD cards in Ubuntu. As a side note, the Ubuntu Forums isn't giving me any hits when I try to search on this subject either.

I have one laptop that will read larger SD cards, even with Ubuntu, however my older PC will only read up to 2Gig. My understanding was that this was a limitation in the BIOS or hardware reader rather than a software problem, yet that doesn't quite explain how Windows can read it.

 

[spoddynerd]

Thanks noway2. The linux box uses an Asus M4A77T motherboard and shows the bios as American Megatrends V02.61 during boot(it also reports version 2301 in a different of the bios screen, so not sure which is the definitive version).

The windows box uses Pheonix bios 2.6.3.

Is this consistent with The windows box reading sdhc and the linux box not doing so?
Is updgrading to AMI 2401 advisable/ likely to fix the problem?

 

[MikeHalloran]

I have a similar problem with CentOS5 and USB flashdrives on a fairly old Thinkpad, where CentOS insists that it can't read a vfat drive and won't even try, but XP dual booted on the same hardware can read and write them just fine.

I have a less similar problem on a Dell 5150 running Fedora 14, where it can read and write 4+ Gb flashdrives, but it says it can't unmount them because 'something else' is using them.

I've searched the Fedora bug reports, and have come to believe that there's some difference in the protocol required to access 4- and 4+Gb flashdrives, and some core piece of Linux doesn't do it quite right, and nobody is interested in fixing it.