Summary:
Trouble accessing data from the SD card? This may be due to corruption or damage on SD card. With the help of approaches explained in the article, not only you can fix the SD card but also, recover data from the corrupt SD card and access your data from the drive.
Quick Navigation:
How do I know my SD card is corrupted?
How to fix corrupt SD card without formatting?
How to fix corrupt SD card by formatting?
How to fix corrupt SD card on Mac?
Frequently Asked Questions
SD cards are the most popularly used storage devices. From digital cameras, camcorders and other portable devices; they are widely used for their portability and ease of use.
If you are facing trouble accessing your favorite videos or photos stored on SD card, it is most probably due to corruption. SD card corruption can also make it RAW or unreadable. If you are wondering how do you know if your SD card is corrupted? In the next section of the article, you will be able to understand the indications of the corrupt SD card and how they stop you from accessing your data.
Indications of a Corrupt SD Card
Here are some of the signs that indicates your SD card may be corrupt or damaged. If you ever encounter any of the following indications it is suggested to take a back up of your data before you try to fix the SD card.
A black screen appears along with an error message SD card is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. The error indicates that the drive has a bad sector leading to the file system damage.
Error messages appear like – Read or Write error on SD card when SD card is corrupted. This error indicates that you will be no longer be able to read any data from the SD card or write any data on it.
SD card cannot be recognized on the device. When your device fails to read the SD card, the error is displayed. When such errors occur, try fixing your corrupt SD card immediately to avoid any data loss situation.
SD card turns RAW or unreadable is the error that occurs when the drive has a problem in its file system. It could be a sign of no file system found or damaged/corrupt file system.
If you continuously encounter any of the above-mentioned error messages, stop using the SD card immediately and follow the below mentioned methods to repair a corrupt SD card.
How to Fix Corrupt or Damaged SD Card Without Formatting?
Before trying the repairing methods, try reading it with a different card adapter or card reader to. Also try using SD card on another device to verify if the trouble you are experiencing is either caused by your computer or SD card. Here are a few ways that helps you fix corruption on SD card without losing your valuable data.
- Change the drive letter
- Reinstall the SD card drivers
- Update the SD card drive
- Fix corrupted SD card using CMD or CHKDSK
- Repair the SD card using the Disk part Command
- Fix SD Card Using Windows Repair Tool
How to Fix Corrupt SD card by Formatting?
- Fix corrupted RAW SD card by reformatting
- Format the error causing SD card
How to Repair Corrupt SD card on Mac?
- Fix SD card using Disk Utility
6 Methods to Repair Corrupt SD card without Losing a Data
Method 1: Change the Drive Letter to Fix Inaccessible SD card
When your computer fails to assign a drive letter to the storage device, SD card becomes inaccessible. To solve the problem, you need to assign a new drive letter to the SD card.
Step 1: Right-click on the start button, Open Disk Management
Step 2: Find your SD card and right-click on it
Step 3: Choose Change Drive Letter and Paths… from the list
Step 4: Click Change… and select a letter from the list.
You can check if the SD card is readable now. If the issue is still not fixed, try reinstalling the driver to fix corrupt SD card problem using the steps in next section.
Method 2: Reinstall the Drive to fix SD card undetected
If your SD card is not detected by your computer, uninstall the drive and try reinstalling. Follow the below-given instructions:
Step 1: Right-click on the start button, click on Device Manager.
Step 2: Expand Disk Drives, right-click on the name of your removable drive and click Uninstall.
Step 3: Click OK. Disconnect the SD card from your computer.
Step 4: Restart your computer and then connect the SD card to your computer again and check if its is being detected.
Windows will install the latest driver automatically and make the SD card detectable. If reinstalling the driver doesn’t fix the problem in the SD card, you can try updating the driver to fix the issue in the SD card.
Method 3: Update the Driver if SD Card is unrecognized
To update the drive, follow the until the second step in Method 2. Select update driver. Once the driver is updated, the computer should automatically be able to detect the SD card.
If the issue is still not fixed, try repairing corrupt SD card using Diskpart command.
Method 4: Diskpart command to fix Corruption on SD card
Diskpart command line helps you manage your computer’s drives free from any system errors.
Step 1: Connect the SD card to your computer and type cmd -> Run as administrator
Step 2: Type diskpart -> press Enter -> Type list disk -> press Enter
Step 3: Type select disk <number of your SD card on the list> and press Enter.
Step 4: Type recover -> Enter. This command will refresh the state of the SD card.
With the help of Diskpart command, you can easily fix the corruption and also recover the data if it is not severely damaged.
Method 5: Windows Repair Tool to Fix SD Card
Windows computer has an inbuilt tool for checking the drives for any system errors. When you insert any corrupt drive, your computer automatically detects and invoke the tool to scan for any damage on the drive. If you skipped the scan, here is the steps to repair SD card using Windows repair tool manually.
Step 1: Go to My computer or This PC.
Step 2: Right-click on your SD card and select Properties
Step 3: Click Tools -> select the Check option -> Click Scan and repair drive
If any warning message is displayed stating that Windows can’t repair the drive while it’s in use, save your work on the SD card and choose to repair it now.
Method 6: Fix Corrupt/damaged SD Card Using CMD /CHKDSK
CHKDSK can be used to fix any logical errors in the device and also, verifies the integrity of the file system. Follow the steps to fix corrupt SD card using CHKDSK command-
Step 1: Connect your corrupted SD card to your computer to repair corrupt SD card
Step 2: Type in cmd in the search bar and press Enter
Step 3: Right-click Command Prompt/ cmd.exe and choose Run as administrator
Step 4: Type chkdsk G: /f in the command prompt, where G is the drive letter of your SD card.
The /f parameter allows CHKDSK to fix all the bad sectors on your memory card.
After completion of the repair process, restart your computer and reconnect the SD card. If no error message appears, you have successfully repaired a corrupted SD.
Recover Data from the Corrupt SD card showing RAW Disk
You might not be able to fix the corrupt SD card using CHKDSK due to an error CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives. This happens when your SD card has turned RAW. When you encounter such error, formatting/reformatting the SD card is the way to repair the corrupt SD card. Unless you fix this error, you will be unable to access the drive and recover files from SD card.
However, reformatting or formatting process involves data loss scenarios. If your SD card holds any important data files, it is recommended to take a backup of it. If the card is severely corrupted you may not be able to take back up. If you are wondering how to recover data from the corrupt SD card, here is the way out.
With the help of an automated SD card recovery tool, you can recover your important data without losing none of it. SFWare SD card recovery tool helps you retrieve your file from severely corrupt or damaged drives. The tool helps you recover data from any kind of SD cards including compact flash drives, microSD card, digital SD cards, SDHC, SDXC, Extreme Digital Picture cards.
Method 7: Fix Corrupted SD Card by Reformatting the drive
If your SD card has turned RAW, the only way to fix the corrupt SD card is to reformat it with NTFS/ Fat32 file system.
Step 1: Connect the corrupted SD card to your computer.
Step 2: Right-click on the Start button and select Disk management
Step 3: Locate your SD card using the disk information and right-click on it.
Step 4: Select Format and then you can select the file system to repair the corrupt SD card
Step 5: Click OK to finish reformatting
By reformatting, the corrupted SD card will be assigned with a new file system that is readable by your computer.
Method 8: Format the Error Causing SD Card to Fix Corruption
Formatting is a quick and effective way recreate a damaged file system and fix SD card. All you have to do is, go to This PC, right-click on your SD card and select Format.
Note: Make sure Quick Format box is unchecked because it only removes the address of the files. where as unchecking the Quick format, leads to Full format option which checks for any bad sectors on the drive as well.
If you were unable to take backup or recover data before performing formatting/ reformatting, don’t worry, with the help of SFWare SD card recovery, you can recover data from formatted SD cards.
How to Fix Corrupt SD card on Mac OS?
Disk Utility on Mac is the inbuilt application by Apple Inc that aids in verifying a disk’s integrity, checks for logical errors and repairs if the disk is damaged.
You can open Disk Utility using any one of the following methods:
1: Click Launchpad in the Dock -> type Disk Utility in the search bar -> click the Disk Utility icon
2: In the Finder, choose Go -> Utilities, then double-click the Disk Utility icon.
Step 1: Open Disk Utility program from the Utilities menu
Step 2: Select your SD card and click on First Aid tab
Step 3: Select the Repair disk button to initiate the repairing process of a corrupt SD card.
If any of the above-mentioned methods helped you in repairing the corrupt SD card, please let us know in the comment section below.
Frequently Asked question
How do I uncorrupt a corrupted SD card?
The best way to uncorrupt or repair SD card is using CMD or CHKDSK to fix bad sectors, using Windows Repair Tool to fix any errors and repair the SD card using the Disk part command
How do I fix a corrupted micro SD card Android?
To repair SD card on android phone, all you need to do is remove your SD card, connect to the card reader and connect to the computer. Once your SD card is connected to the computer, try the methods explained in the article and fix the corrupt or damaged SD card.
What happens if my SD card is corrupted?
When SD card is corrupted, you will not be able to access any data from it. SD card will not be read by the PC or recognized. Also, you may see the indication of SD card showing RAW file system. However, if you come across any of the indication, you need to recover data from corrupt SD card and fix the drive.
Why is my SD card corrupted?
SD card can get corrupt due to multiple reasons. Most common reasons are bad sectors on the drive, virus intrusion, using same SD card on multiple devices may cause damage to the files.