New tab 4 plus cant detect SD card

[mrbi11]

I'm new to android tablets, so dont assume I know what Im doing.

Very experienced pc user.

Have 64gb micro sd formatted as PC does when plugging the SD into a USB via adapter. I assume that is fat 32, but its the same as ane USB drive I think.

Puzzled out the plastic sd/sim card holder and pretty sure I have it plugged in the only way it fits.

Settings storage does not see any extra storage. It sees the internal 64gb only.

Same for factory file manager and several generic file manager apps.

I read some stuff about formatting, which I have not done.

Its unclear how I could format a device the system doesnt recognze is there.

Ideally I would use the same format as the USB drives, as that way I can plug it to my PC USB ports.

However if that just doesnt work I would like to know what does?

Help is much appreciated.

[Jwes_Lenovo]

Hi mrbi11! Welcome to our forums community. It's not necessarily that the format is FAT 32, it depends on the drop down. Usually it is NTFS or exFAT format. You can refer to the photo below. When you format an external storage to your tablet, you have an option to format as an extension of the internal storage or just a regular external storage. Please refer to the link below.

https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/tablets/a-series/tab3-7/solutions/ht500296

Regards

[I2k4]

The answer from the Lenovo Support, above is accurate but doesn't go into detail about differences between "virtual internal" and "portable" format, which are important.  Following is from an exchange with someone else about it:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-Android-based-Tablets-and/Lenovo-Tab-4-10-unable-to-move-or-copy...

Especially if you plan on removing the microSD and reading it in a PC or other device, don't use "internal" (otherwise known as "adoptable") storage which is deeply encrypted and unreadable outside the specific tablet.  Portable formatted will work like any ordinary storage medium in multiple devices.  

As a side note, when in doubt I always just format microSD cards in Windows NTFS before letting an Android device or camera do their specialized format on them:  while techies seem to like FAT32 as a supposed "standard" the world makes things to work with Mama Microsoft.

[mrbi11]

Thanks for posting some reply.

However, there is no option to do ANYTHING AT ALL.

When I insert the sd card, literlly nothing happens. It does not recognize the crd,

does not offer to format it. it acts as if it cant see the sd card at all.

I tried going thru settings but there was nothing obvious that appeared related.

I may have had the sd card in a camera or another laptop at some point, so it has whatever disk format that would have left behind.

Even so, I would expect the device to recognize it has some hardware and offer to reformat as necessary to use it.

But there is no possibility of answering any questions the tablet pops up, because it does not react to the drive in any way.