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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?

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cgmotophoto

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.

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Jay

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!

cgmotophoto

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.

Jay

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.

cgmotophoto

Jay, The files have been uploaded and synchronized. Thats not the issue. Again, its hard to find the features and settings in Dropbox. When I click on the Dropbox Icon on my laptop, it simply opens a Windows list of files in Dropbox. All of which I can access as I would any other file on the PC. No other Icons, settings, or other features I can modify. Typically if I want to erase all the content on an SD card, I can simply re-format the card which erases everything. Not so with this one as a pop up comes back with "Card is Read Only".

Jay

Are you able to locate the Dropbox icon in the system tray near the clock? From there you'll be able to access the preferences.

cgmotophoto

Jay

No worries, I'm glad to hear that you were able to locate what was causing this behavior.

If you have any further queries in the future, feel free to message back!