No sd card access after kitkat update. Half *** fix

[TheAvgJoe]

After the 4.4 update on my Galaxy S4, totally unable to delete photos from DCIM directory. File size got huge. I tried solutions from many forums but no luck. Finally, I just got out my 2 year old Motorola, stuck the SD card in it and deleted the pics I didn't want.
Crappy fix but at least it works. Most of us have an older Android laying around. If not, borrow a buddy's phone.

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[Rukbat]

The app you're using to delete (or trying to delete) the photos with doesn't own the folder the photos are in, so it can't write to it (and deleting is writing). Since 4.4, the SD card is part of the file system, it's not an external storage device, so only an app that created the folder or one with root access can write to the folder. (It's one of those "it's not a bug, it's a feature" things as far as I'm concerned. Except I don't like the kind of feature that takes away functionality of the phone.)

You can always pop the card into a card reader and delete files in a PC - Windows doesn't even see Linux's permissions - you can delete any file and write to any folder as far as Windows is concerned.