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Raspberry Pi not reading the SD card? Fix it in 2 easy steps

3 min. read

Updated onOctober 4, 2023

updated onOctober 4, 2023

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Key notes

On the firstboot, the Raspberry Pi needs an SD card with the OS mounted on it; otherwise, you can’t go any further.

Many Pi boards come with a microSD card with the NOOBS (New Out Of the Box Software)installer; of course, you can also have your own standalone image. Whichever method you use, it is recommended to use an 8GB for SD card or higher.

But what’s most important, is to use areliable SD cardmanufacturer. Now, you might probably not know from the start whether you’ve picked the wrong one, but buying only from authorized suppliers and doing some research on recommended SD card brands for Pi might be helpful.

Whenbooting, you will know that there’s a problem with the SD card if the red LED is blinking, while the green LED is not. Or, the green LED can blink regularly (3 to 8 times) to indicate that there’s a problem with the card.

How do I fix the Raspberry Pi SD card issues?

1. Mount a fresh OS image

This is the standard recommended solution to fix a faulty microSD card. However, users complained that the Pi fails to recognize the card all too frequently and that they have to re-install a fresh image over and over again.

It is very frustrating, which is why the next solution might be helpful, but only after a first successful firstboot: namely to make a read-only copy of the OS on a USD stick or another mediadevice.

2. Make a read-only copy of the SD card

If you then need to make changes to the system,you can remount the read-only partitions with write accesssudo mount -o remount, rw /dev/mmcblk0p2 .

Additional info

We would like to have your intake on this matter, so drop us a line with any other solutions that you might have, in the comments section below.

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More about the topics:Raspberry Pi errors

Milan Stanojevic

Windows Toubleshooting Expert

Milan has been enthusiastic about technology ever since his childhood days, and this led him to take interest in all PC-related technologies. He’s a PC enthusiast and he spends most of his time learning about computers and technology.

Before joining WindowsReport, he worked as a front-end web developer. Now, he’s one of the Troubleshooting experts in our worldwide team, specializing in Windows errors & software issues.

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Milan Stanojevic

Windows Toubleshooting Expert

Before joining WindowsReport, he worked as a front-end web developer. Now, he’s specialized in Windows errors & software issues.