Help Difficulties with formatting/accessing new SD card

[slippyB]

hi all.

Got myself a HTC desire z 2 weeks ago - android 2.1 - it comes with an 8Gb memory card, but bought myself a 32 Gb card on Ebay and it arrived on monday. It was 2nd hand and used by someone else who had it for his phone.
I saved all the stuff from my old card on a separate folder on my laptop, then unmounted the old card and inserted the new card. However the phone is only recognising it as a read-only card, and i'm not able to access it when i connect it to my laptop via a microsd adapter.
When i attempt to reformat (which the laptop suggests to do when inserted) it then says 'unable to format'.
i've downloaded another formatting software but it too is unable to format.
when in the phone settings it reads the card as being 29 Gb: but 'read-only', and the option to format the sd card is shaded and cannot be selected.
I also downloaded the 'h2testw' software to see if it was a dud but it says that its not able to recognise the card type.

any ideas anyone?? I think my problems might stem from the card being seen as read-only - is there any way to change that even if unable to access the card? I'm unable to access the folders section on the card even.

Any help/pointers would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Slug]

Have a look at the card when attached to your laptop with Windows' Disk Management
Console, and check that there's only a single FAT32 partition present on the card. You can also try deleting any existing partitions from here, as you've no data on the card to lose. Then insert the card into your handset and try formatting it again.

If, even after these steps, you're still unsuccessful then I think it's odds-on that the card is defective.

 

[slippyB]

thanks- turned out to be buggered....lesson learned.