How to reinitialize Eye-Fi Connect X2 card?

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I inadvertently reformatted my Eye-Fi Connect X2 card using the Disk Utility app on my iMac running OSX. Now, my Eye-Fi Center software on my Mac won't recognize the Eye-Fi card. I suspect I may have wiped out some important partition on the Eye-Fi card. Is there a way to reinitialize the Eye-Fi card so the Eye-Fi center app recognizes it again?

I'm asking here in this forum because the official Eye-Fi Support Staff no longer supports these older WiFi cards. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
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Dave Furey

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Posted 5 years ago

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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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you can reformat the card in your camera, there is nothing on the user area that is important for the operation of the eyefi card. most likely the card is not being recognised due to a non compatible or faulty card reader. did you use the supplied card reader? do you have another card reader you could try?
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Dave Furey

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Actually, I inserted the Eye-Fi card into the SD slot on my iMac and reformatted the entire card. I'm afraid I may have wiped out a special partition that had some "Media" files that are used when syncing with the Eye-Fi Center desktop app. Right now, the card as absolutely nothing on it and is formatted exFAT, Master Boot Record.
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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formatting is good for eyefi cards just as it is for any sd card this is not the reason for your imac not recognising it. is it recognised by your camera? i have had people have problems with the built in card readers on macs you do need to try with the supplied card reader before assuming the card is faulty. can you take images with it in your camera does it try to send those images?
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Dave Furey

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The card isn't setup for connecting with my network, so it won't transfer files. I've read online that the card has a "private partition" where the network settings are stored, but I believe I wiped out all the partitions on the card when I did the reformatting and repartitioning. What I really need, is instructions on how to repartition the card and reinstall any missing wifi files so it will communicate with the Eye-Fi Center software again. Thanks for your suggestions.
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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this private partition cannot be broken under normal use you cannot wipe it either deliberately or accidentally, an in opportune power interruption can cause this to happen as can a faulty card but is incredibly unlikely you cannot remove or reinstall the alleged missing files this is incredibly unlikely to be your problem. we would need to see a card log before proceeding further down that line to do that would require you to get the card to be recognised by the mac this would require the use of an alternative card reader or preferably the eyefi card reader. have you tried to format the card in the camera?
(Edited)
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Dave Furey

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Thanks for your feedback. I'm using the EyeFi card reader (big orange thing) with the EyeFi card in a USB port on my Mac, and The EyeFi Center software still doesn't recognize the card. So, I can't configure the card's network settings. I can try using a Windows PC and see if it works.
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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what version of the desktop app are you using?

you need to be careful the mobi desktop app will not recognise or work with your x2 card.

this is the download link to the app you need for your x2 card
https://x2help.eyefi.com/hc/en-us/articles/200398426-Download-Eyefi-Center-for-Mac-OS-X-or-Windows

did the card work before you formatted it to exfat one thing you could try would be to format the card using the sd formatter in your mac or pc

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

formatting the card will not have erased its settings but the card will not make any attempts to send anything if it cant recognise the file system or there are no new images on the card in a DCF compliant filesystem
(Edited)
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Dave Furey

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Alan, thanks for all your help. Using the SD Formatter software reformatted my EyeFi card in the correct format. Also, I was using a slightly older version of the EyeFi Center software after which when updated it the software was able to see the EyeFi card! Hurray!

My issue now is assigning a Network connection between the EyeFi card and my Google OnHub router. The router reports the EyeFi is making a connection, but the EyeFi Center software won't finish the network configuration (I get a "DHCP TIMEOUT error). I'll keep trying. It might be something with my new OnHub router. 

Thanks again for your help!
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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no problem you can send me a card log now if you can get one that may shed some light on the connection issue you are having but remember the eyefi card will only support the 2.4ghz band so no 5ghz only also the you need to be careful about security settings you cannot use the 64 char hex key and must use the passphrase assigned to your router's wifi network, in fact rather than go through all the requirements let me find the link  also look out for mac filtering or other  security features on your router make sure you have dhcp enabled in the router eyefi cards will not support static ip addresses

ops maybe good to share where to send the log alanhinchcliffe@hotmail.com
(Edited)
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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got the log chears dave

the important bit of the card log is this part

[99:59] Done scanning for new media (detected 0 MB in all media). Uploads
pending.
[99:59] Connection timed out (state is 3)
[99:59] Disable WPA Supplicant
[99:59] Deauthenticate: reason 256, from f4:f2:6d:ac:58:be
[99:59] Disconnected from WLAN (reason = 3).
[99:59] FindBestMatch: 1
[99:59] Connecting to WLAN "TT Network"...
[99:59] Setup WPA Supplicant
[99:59] ERP info: non-erp: false, prot: off, preamble short
[99:59] Assoc: TT Network, bp 100, mac f4:f2:6d:ac:58:be, c: 11, auth 4,
rssi 62
[99:59] Common Rates: 01B 02B 05B 06 09 11B 12 18 24 36 48 54
[99:59] htCapInfo: 112d
[99:59] Cap: 0431
[99:59] AssocResp: chanAgi 0, shortpream 1, cf_pol 0, cf_rqst 0, priv 1,
ibss 0, ess 1
[99:59] WPA Connected
[99:59] Start DHCP
[99:59] Starting scan of media directories...
[99:59] Done scanning for new media (detected 0 MB in all media). Uploads
pending.
[99:59] Starting scan of media directories...
[99:59] Done scanning for new media (detected 0 MB in all media). Uploads
pending.
[99:59] Description:Disassoc Event  Length :16
[99:59] 0000    09 00 00 00 F4 F2 6D AC 58 BE 00 00 00 00 00 00
......m.X.......
[99:59] Disassoc reason: 62706, peer: 6d:ac:58:be:00:00
[99:59] Disconnected from WLAN (reason = 4).
[99:59] Disable WPA Supplicant

i was going to see if i could get an eyefi support guy to look at this.

it looks like the router is refusing the connection the signal strength is good at rssi 62. dont worry about the 2.4ghz and 5ghz so long as you have it set to use both it will work as it
looks like it is trying to do.
(Edited)
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Dave Furey

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I've investigated this further and here's what I've found:

My new Google OnHub (TP-Link) router only supports devices with WPA2+AES encryption, and it does not support WPA or WEP (older protocols). From this web page I see that the EyeFi card supports WPA2-PSK which isn't on the OnHub's supported list of encryption protocols.

Also, the OnHub router has two frequencies (2.4 and 5 GHz) which it uses together to optimize performance of connected devices. Supposedly, a 2.4 GHz-only device can connect to the OnHub router with no issues. However, Google has stated that one device called "SkyBell" only uses 2.4 GHz and cannot connect to routers which have the dual-band routers implemented like OnHub does.

So, I suspect my connection issue is either due to the WPA2-PSK encryption of the EyeFi card or because the card can't connect to a dual frequency router as with the OnHub. Unfortunately, I can't deactivate the 5 GHz frequency on this router.
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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im using an asus RT N66U with my eyefi cards and which is dual band im using wpa2-personal with AES encryption using wpa-psk so the AES should not be the problem neither should the dual band feature be, are you using any special characters in the key such as symbols or are you just using letters and numbers?
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Dave Furey

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Just letters and numbers in the passphrase. No special characters.
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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i have sent an email to eyefi support on your behalf 
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Dave Furey

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Thanks for the help!
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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hi Dave i spoke to George an awesome tech at eyefi and tbh he thinks its most likely the router, im not sure how you feel about this suggestion as its pretty involved but see if you can keep up and if you can maybe give it a whirl.

he suggested trying your old router now you could just hook it up to your pc as a temporary fix and try the eyefi card without internet access but for a long term solution you could disable the DHCP server in you old router sets its ip address so its in the range of the new router but not clashing with other devices and on the same subnet then hook it up to the google onhub router it should then act as an additional access point and allow pass though to you onhub router. if you tell me the make and model of the old router i may be able to find a walk through for this.
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Dave Furey

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Alan, I actually switched back to my old Apple WiFi router late last night, giving up on the new Google OnHub router (too may dropped connections). Being back on the Apple Router I was able to initialize the EyeFi Card to use my home network and everything is working fine again. New picture files on the EyeFi card are automatically syncing with my Mac. So, George was correct in that it was an issue with the Google router.

Thanks again for all your help!
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Alan Hinchcliffe, Champion

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well thats a shame the new router did not work out for you, i hope you can return it and get a refund. if you are looking for a router to improve connection speed and reliability you wont go wrong with one the the asus RT-N66U or the newer version no simple ui or flashing lights im afraid just good solid wifi