How to Repair or Fix a Corrupted micro SD Card

Here is how to repair and/or fix a corrupt SD Card

How to Preserve your important and precious data from being corrupted and recover from accidental deletions

SD cards are great as they are small in size, lightweight and versatile (you can store any type of data on them). But what happens when a SD card on which you stored your important files, becomes inaccessible or corrupt and what about a SD card whose entire data got wiped out for no apparent reason.

We all face such kind of situation when our smartphone/PC/laptop throws up a message that it can’t access the SD card. Such situations are scary as we don’t have any access to the important files stored on the SD card. At least for those who store important files/videos/images in their memory card).

However, almost every problem has a solution. There are solutions to each of the specific data loss case. Most common of them are provided below.

I just can’t access my SD card

This is one the most common issue that readers complain about. Maybe this is a problem with other hardware that is your computer’s USB port or the card reader you’re using. Try connecting your card reader on a different port of the same computer or do it with a different computer. Also, you can try using a different card reader.

The Computer Shows my card name but not the content

If in case the content of the card is not being shown, you can try this:

1. Open the search bar and type “cmd”.
2. Click on “Command Prompt” or “cmd.exe”
3. Type in “chkdsk /X /f sd card letter:” or “chkdsk sd card letter: /f “, for example,”chkdsk /X /f G:” or “chkdsk H: /f”.

Windows will check and fix the file system of the SD card. It will take a few minutes. If you see a message saying “Windows has made corrections to the file system” in the command window, then you’re done. Otherwise, you will have to use some third-party data recovery software.

Formatting the SD card

If the data contained on your card is not very useful or important, you can format the card to wipe all the bloating stuff.

To format your card, follow these steps:

1. Locate your SD card on your computer.( Usually its the last drive letter in “My Computer”)
2 Right click on its drive letter.
3. Select Format.
4. Select “Start”.
5. If you encounter any problem, retry with “Quick Format” box unchecked.

Using a data recovery software

The best way to get back all your important data will be to use a decent data recovery software. There are numerous software available. Some of them, which are considered to be “best-in-class” are listed.
1. Recuva (Experts recommend it as it is economical and does the job well)
2. Prosoft’s Data Rescue(Voted as best commercial data recovery software in 2016)
3.MiniTool Partition Recovery

These methods will help you get back your invaluable data back. Be sure to copy your data to a new SD card as soon as you recover your data as the problem you began with may trouble you again.

Abhishek Awasthi
Abhishek Awasthi
Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection -Mark Twain.

11 COMMENTS

  1. My sd card was only 5 months old and its a 32gb samsung card its started flashing on my phone and and i lost all data also ot will not read the card on my phone or the computer what should i do i have alot of child hood picture memories of my kid that i dont want to loose what should i do its been over 6 months since this happened and i still have hope that i can get it all back

    • You can get that back or at least there is a considerable chance of recovery. Have you tried any of Photo Recovery Software? It is available vastly online and you simply have to download, install and run the software after connecting your SD card to a PC/Mac. Try out and let me know the results…
      If you ask me about some good and reliable one, I can recommend
      Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery (considered as the best one)
      7-data Photo Recovery Software (equally competitive)
      Jihosoft Photo Recovery (Can be a bit relaxing on your Pocket)

  2. My SD card is locked . It shows the contents but you cant remove and put the file into sd card.I tried many times to format but it say unable to format . can you please help me?

  3. sir,
    my sd card not formate through cmd ,disk part,device management,direct formate,mini tool partition and some other software but not formate my sd card and chkdsk not apply this card so how to only format my sd card.
    please help me.

  4. My memory card is not showing content and alsow not showing my data so how to recover my data …. (Memory card inserted into my phone not showing content)…plz help me

  5. When I connect my sd card to my laptop the card not showing in my computer. What should I do please help me my SD card is 4 gb

  6. Hello! Can you help me? My Memory Card was working but suddenly the Phone off. and i noticed that the Phone can’t read Sd Card i tried it to other phones and it’s say that it’s Corrupted for unknown reason. and i tried to format it using My android phone it says “Can’t Format” or Operation Failed any advice to fix it?

  7. I’m not able to access my SD card in PC as well as mobile.
    I tried all the above mentioned methods but it did not work.
    In PC my SD card is not giving any name or specific drive but it is showing as USB drive(H:) but, I’m getting Cannot open volume for direct access in CMD

  8. i had tried formatting inside of android and received a corrupt sdcard error ” command 80 volume partition disk 179_96 public failed with 400 80 command failed “. i tried to format in windows using the standard built in windows formatting tool and it fail as well giving me the ” Windows was unable to complete the format ” so i tried using diskpart and it also would not let me re-partition or format. So i tried a linux distro via a linux live cd it re-partitioned and formated it using mkfs.fat google “mkfs.fat” on instruction on how to use it if your not familiar.

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