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I have a Eye-Fi Pro X2 SD card that I got a couple years ago. I usually use Wi-Fi to transfer photos to my Mac (router connection not direct), but I was on vacation so I put the card into my Mac's SD card slot (which was a bad mistake). When I ejected the card from the SD slot, some of the plastic casing, including a plastic prong (the one that shields the terminals) broke off. Now my Mac (or PC) won't recognize the card. The good news is that my camera does recognize the card, so I guess I can use USB or Wi-Fi transfer still. I was wondering if this happened to anyone else, or if anyone has any solutions. Maybe I could try to 3D print a new housing with Shapeways? Thanks! :)

BTW this isn't the first time this happened with my Mac's SD card reader.

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Rather than 3d printing a new housing (which has tighter tolerances than many 3d printers can do) you could try taking a scalpel or razor blade to an old or cheap SD card (e.g. I hoard camera kit and could probably lay my hands on some 256MB cards). I would try to split it into two flat halves. Then see if you can extract the contents in one piece. There will be some extremely fine wires in there which you don't want to break or cross.

If you can do this on a scrap card, move on to trying it on the eye-Fi card (which could easily be harder). Then you should be able to use half the eye-Fi and half the scrap card to make one card with the aid of some super glue.

Warnings:

  • You could easily end up with two dead cards - make sure you've got any photos off them.
  • Try your new card in a cheap external card reader first in case the wiring went badly wrong. Also be careful it's not too fat for the slot.
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I haven't seen this happen personally, but I have a couple of notes:

Maybe I could try to 3D print a new housing

Why bother? If you're having issues with the card why not throw it away and buy a new one? Storage is getting cheap these days...

this isn't the first time this happened with my Mac's SD card reader

You either have something drastically wrong with your mac, are not ejecting your cards correctly or are buying particularly low quality cards. Where you're losing the plastic is not where the locking mechanism holds the card in, so at a total guess, there is something foreign in the card reader that is catching the plastic and pulling it off.

If you know that putting your cards in that reader is going to break them, don't do it. Ever. Go buy an external reader, use USB from your camera etc, but avoid that reader at all costs.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Please forgive me for my ignorance, but why would someone rather remove the card from the camera and put it into the computer without connecting it through USB? \$\endgroup\$
    – user152435
    Commented May 8, 2016 at 5:07
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    \$\begingroup\$ @user152435 that's the normal thing. Historically the camera-as-device was limited or even proprietary, and slow. Furthermore, cards were too low in capacity, so you'd come home with a handfull of cards cycled through the camera. \$\endgroup\$
    – JDługosz
    Commented May 8, 2016 at 7:21
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    \$\begingroup\$ Hmm, still true as seen on a comment to this answer. Attaching the camera via usb might not "just work" like a usb card reader. \$\endgroup\$
    – JDługosz
    Commented May 8, 2016 at 7:28
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    \$\begingroup\$ Hi, thanks for your response. The reason I did not want to buy a new card is because the card was expensive (because it has Wi-Fi built in). I think I might buy a new card though because the new Eye-Fi cards are much better and mine is a bit outdated. Thanks. :) \$\endgroup\$
    – Joseph
    Commented May 8, 2016 at 16:01
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    \$\begingroup\$ Or just want to use a normal drive letter (or mount point) without weird stuff, and be the same for any card from any camera so a script checks and moves the files. But, I wonder if that's already answered in depth on its own Question here. photo.stackexchange.com/questions/14669/… maybe time for an update. \$\endgroup\$
    – JDługosz
    Commented May 8, 2016 at 22:51

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