“Un-write-protecting” an SDHC Card

SDHC cards are cheap, REALLY cheap.  For this I am very grateful.  It’s awesome that you can get 16gig cards for 30 bucks.  Massive storage for all!  They are also VERY small and there isn’t a whole lot to these little cards.  The cases are flimsy and don’t have a whole lot to them.  I have a handful of cards and one of mine had it’s tiny little $0.01 write protection tab fall out.

I thought I was screwed because no matter how I tried to use this card it would not let me write to it.  The card was cheap, but I didn’t want to waste the gas and\or shipping costs of getting a new card.  I thought back to my analog days of 3.5″ floppies and cassette tapes.  I remember that these items when write protected were easily overriden with a piece of tape (or drilling a hole in the case of the cheap floppies).  I tried the same with my SDHC card and voila! I was writting away.  It turns out that the write-protectedness of the card is determined by the reader just like in the old days.  AWESOME!