SD card not working | Prusa Knowledge Base

Our Original Prusa i3 printers offer two ways of printing: via a USB cable or by loading g-codes from an SD card. If you are experiencing SD-card-related issues, try some of our tips below.

card removed

"Card removed" message on the LCD screen.

If you have inserted your SD card into the SD card slot and the printer's LCD screen still says "Card removed", try the following steps:

Inspect the SD card slot and make sure there is no debris or dust inside.
Inspect the SD card itself, see if it's not damaged.
Make sure that the SD card is correctly inserted. The right orientation has the card's pins facing towards you.
Check if the SD card is fully inserted.
That the SD card is formatted to FAT32. ExFAT is not compatible.
If the SD card still doesn't respond, insert it into your PC and see if your operating system recognizes it. If it does, consider creating a backup of your files and use a different SD card with your printer.

Check out the dedicated article on SD cards and USB drives for more information on formatting.

"File incomplete. Continue anyway?"

Our printers can detect a corrupted file on the SD card. A prompt appears on the screen, asking whether you would like to continue printing. Please check our article on how to test your G-codes before printing.

Incomplete file

20 comments

mza1979m

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For as long as I can remember (years), I've had SD card reading issues. If the card is inserted, and I accidentally nudge it, it thinks the card was removed and the print stops. It's very finicky and any little tap will break the connection. This happens on BOTH my Prusa printers (MK3S MMU2S and MK2S). It's very frustrating that something so simple can break a 20 hour print!

reeveshd

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I have not seen comments to my exact problem and fix. I started having the SD slot not accept some of my sd cards, but it would others. At a quick glance with the naked eye, the cards looked identical. With a magnifying glass, I noticed a piece of plastic from the sd card on the double pin closest to you as you would insert it, broke off and was jammed in the sd card track on the printer. Half of my cards had this corner of plastic broken off. Solution: took the LCD screen board out of the enclosure, small needle, reached in and backed that broken piece of sd card out and reassembled.

heather

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I bought my printer built- not the kit - prusa i3 mk3s+ and same issue... the sd card they included with the printer for a test print read as "no SD card" but upon insertion it went directly to a menu with a file that would not open and "back." and upon removing it it it said "sd card removed" -- this included card did not work on my computer, it was not even acknowledged as existing. I tried my own SD card which worked on my computer but the same thing happened when I put it in the printer. I haven't gotten to make even one print yet.

heather

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solved... reformatted my own card to FAT via disc utility on my mac and it reads now... the one they sent me is unreadable.

Same Old Shane

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For this, I would either press the chat now button in the lower right hand corner, or email [email protected] to reach tech support and talk to them about this and see if a replacement can be sent.

Mario Baum

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This is how I solved the display on Prusa reading "No SD card".
When inserting the card, the machine must have recognized a card was inserted because it went into the SD card file list menu. But no files visible and when stepping back to the main menu, it said "No SD card". First I tried formatting card on a MacBook Air to the FAT32 using the disk utility app but it did not work. Then I made a successfull formatting of the card from CLI (command line / terminal) like this:
diskutil eraseDisk "MS-DOS FAT32" PRUSAC MBRFormat /dev/disk2

WARNING: Run "diskutil list" first and make sure your card is also mounted on disk2 or else you could erase your computer harddrive.

NOTE: It is the "MBRFormat" that did the trick and I was not able to find that as an option in the disk utility app.

[email protected]

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THX! Now I can print again :) Format via Terminal works.

Silvertips

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Thank you so much!

I wasn't able to get worked any cards appart from the one from prusa.
Now it's working whith all cards .

JAnger

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On my Mk3S+ if I put SD cards all the way in they are not recognized. If I then pull the card out 2mm then they all work (same behavior on 3 different cards). I've cleaned the SD card contacts which makes no difference. I will check inside the printer for dirt and alignment problems.