media-kit-reports-not-enough-space-on-device-for-requested-operation.md

MediaKit reports not enough space on device for requested operation

Caution

ONLY follow these instructions if you received this error message when using Disk Utility in a previous step. You have already been warned that this will wipe-out data on the MicroSD card.

Searching the web for this error message text turned up some useful results. This error tends to popup when converting a volume from NTFS → APFS, or when the partition mapping needs to be re-done.

• Ask Different: MediaKit reports not enough space on device for requested operation
• Appuals: Fix: Mediakit Reports Not Enough Space on Device for Requested Operation
• Super User: How can I resolve the error "MediaKit reports partition (map) too small"?

Note

This error has nothing to do with the RG35XX or this formatting process. Rather this is the result of how the card was formatted previously and macOS’s ability to work with it.

1. Open Terminal.app (or your preferred terminal app).

   

2. Using the built-in diskutil command, view the list of drives.

   diskutil list

   View help for diskutil…

   
   

   To view help for diskutil, run the command by itself.

   diskutil

3. Take the Device ID that we found when we ran into the error, and look for it in this output. Mine was disk5s1 (yours may be different, so change the value as appropriate), so I'm going to look for /dev/disk5 in this list.

   TIP: Each device can have zero or more volumes. In disk5s1, disk5 is the device, and s1 is the name of the volume.

   /dev/disk5 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *31.9 GB    disk5
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 UNTITLED                31.9 GB    disk5s1
   

4. Unmount the device volumes. In my case that is /dev/disk5 (yours may be different, so change the value as appropriate).

   diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk5

   If that does not work, use force.

   diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/disk5

   View help for diskutil unmountDisk…

   
   

   To view help for diskutil unmountDisk, run the command by itself.

   diskutil unmountDisk

5. Next, we're going to write zeroes to the boot sector of the drive, which should wipe-out any faulty partition data, allowing us to re-partition the card. In my case that is /dev/disk5 (yours may be different, so change the value as appropriate).

   • We're going to use a command called dd which is short for Data Duplicator. (It might also stand for Disk Destroyer if you have typos in your command — so be careful.)

   • We're going to be calling sudo (meaning "Hey Super-user, do…"). This will require you to authorize the command using your login password since it needs to perform a low-level, highly-powerful action.

   • There are certain cases where it's possible to have multiple versions of dd installed. We're going to very specifically invoke the one installed at /bin/dd.

   sudo /bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk5 bs=1024 count=1024

   TIP: See https://ss64.com/mac/dd.html if you want to learn more about this command and these options.

   Output should look something like this:

   1024+0 records in
   1024+0 records out
   1048576 bytes transferred in 0.164488 secs (6374787 bytes/sec)
   

6. Physically remove the MicroSD card from your computer, then put it back in.

7. macOS won't be able to read the card because we just zeroed out the boot sector, removing all partitions and volumes.

   

   When this dialog is shown, choose Initialize… to open Disk Utility.

   

8. On the left (1) select the device. (Mine is a SD card reader built-in to my Mac called Apple SDXC Reader Media. Yours may be different). Once we have that selected, we choose Erase from the tool bar (2).

   

9. After choosing Erase, we will be presented with a dialog box. This box contains a few options, and we want to change them.

   Field	Selection
   Name	Untitled is fine. We'll be changing this soon anyway.
   Format	Choose MS-DOS (FAT).
   Scheme	Choose Master Boot Record.

   You should end up with this. If all is well, click the Erase button to begin.

   

10. Disk Utility will begin reformatting the MicroSD card. When it is done, it should say Operation successful. If so, click the Done button.