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Forum Discussion
cgmotophoto
2 years agoHelpful | Level 5
SD card changed itself to Read only after Dropbox Download
I have the Dropbox app on my PC Lenovo Laptop. I wanted to move the contents of an SD card to Dropbox using the computer's SD card reader. I've done previous downloads to the computer hard drive (Photos and Sony Apps) in the past with no issues. As soon as I inserted the SD card into the reader, I received a prompt to download to Dropbox. Excellent! The download worked well with reasonable speed (there were almost 1000 images on the card), but then once finished, I inserted the SD card back into the camera and an Icon appeared saying the card was read only. Apparently something changed the permissions on the card during download process. Is there any way to restore the card to a read/write state through the drop box app on my laptop or did I just nuke an expensive card by allowing it to download directly to Dropbox?
It appears that there's a small switch on the side of an SD card that allows the card to be locked in read only mode. Removing the card from the card reader, the switch was moved accidentally and changed the setting of the card. Because it occurred immediately after downloading the card files to Dropbox, I had assumed an electronic rather than a mechanical setting had been altered. All good now.
- JayDropbox Staff
Hi cgmotophoto, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
The SD card shouldn't change to being read-only after any interaction with Dropbox.
Did you enable the camera upload feature on the desktop for images and videos to be automatically synced to Dropbox, or did you enable the external drive backup?
This will help me to assist further!
- cgmotophotoHelpful | Level 5
Jay, I did neither. As mentioned in the initial post, I simply inserted the SD into the Card Reader on the PC laptop and a DropBox Icon appeared with a prompt to download to contents of the SD card to Dropbox. Should there be a setting in Dropbox to direct the computer to do this, and if yes, I'd like to be able to choose where my files are imported. But the larger issue is the change that occurred with the SD card.
- JayDropbox Staff
You can check the Camera Uploads folder on your Dropbox account to see if the files are there, to confirm if it was using the camera upload feature.
Regarding the SD card, you'll need to find a way to unmark it from being read-only in your OS-setting, as this isn't something that the Dropbox service would change on your card.
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