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Dude, Where Is My SDXC Drive?

A funny thing happened when I upgraded my Surface Pro 3 to the latest Release Preview. I’m talking Build 18362.53, otherwise known as 1903 aka May 2019 Update. Before the upgrade, the PC saw its SDXC card and contents without issue. After the upgrade, nada. Before the upgrade, DevMgr saw something named “Richoh SD Disk Device.” After the upgrade only a generic “SD Disk Device” appears there, and it doesn’t work. I didn’t see this myself though. I got a private message from TenForums user StanP50 that asked if I could access my SDXC card under the latest build. His wasn’t working. So I checked mine, and sure enough: it wasn’t working either. And that’s what led me to the immortal question “Dude, where is my SDXC drive?”

Before the upgrade, SDXC worked fine; after the upgrade, its was invisible in Explorer and inaccessible in Disk Management.

Where is my SDXC drive, and how do I get it back?

Looks like we’ve got a specific issue here on my Surface Pro 3 (SP3). My other Release Preview laptop, a Lenovo X220 Tablet, also upgraded to 18362.53, sees its SDXC card just fine. I rolled back to the preceding version 17763.404 on the SP3, and presto! Now it sees and accesses its SDXC media correctly, too. Sigh.

I’ve reported this to the Feedback Hub as “1903 knocks out SDXC card.” If you’ve got a Surface Pro 3 with an SDXC card installed that’s running 1903, you might want to check to see if you have the same problem, too. If so, please upvote that thread.

Demonstrating the Value of Release Preview

This is just the kind of thing that a Release Preview is supposed to flush out of the woodwork. And with the actual, full-blown public release still perhaps as many as seven weeks out, MS has time to find and fix what testers report. Though it’s vexing to lose access to a device, it’s better that people who volunteer to test the software prior to public release do it, instead of the unwashed masses. Most of us testers expect a few rough spots to show themselves, and know how to report and deal with them. I have a feeling this is just one glitch among many that will be found and fixed before the end of May comes around. Relax! The system is working as intended. To me, that’s actually reassuring.

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