SD card not showing up or reading on your phone or computer is the common thing. However, it seems that you cannot find the best solution to fix the problem. That is what we shall share you here, 12 ways to fix SD card not being detected on phone or computer. You can always find the best one here. When you find your phone storage is not enough, take a SD card is always a good choice. However, embarrassedly, SD card sometimes disappear in your phone storage or fail to show up on your computer.
There are plenty of reasons to cause an SD card not recognized on your device. But we still list some of them to help you avoid and solve such a problem.
• Physical Damage
A drop or collision of physical damage to the SD card or card slot can interfere with the device's capability to read it.
• File System Errors
The card may also have been formatted in a file system that is incompatible with the device trying to read it.
• Driver Issues
The device's drivers might be outdated or corrupt, causing reading errors.
• Incorrect Insertion
The card might not have been inserted into the slot properly, or the slot might be dirty and have a bad contact.
• Device Compatibility
The SD card may not show compatibility with the device, especially if it is a newer card used with an older device.
• Write Protection
The write protection feature can be enabled on the SD card, making it unusable.
CHKDSK is a program that will fix and recover your damaged or corrupted SD card, hard drive automatically. Here’re the steps to use it:
Step 1. Search the Command Prompt in the search bar and open it.
Step 2. Type “chkdsk h: \ / F”. The “h” should be your SD card letter.
Then, the system will try to fix your card automatically. Once done, try to open it again.
SD card container is the device that put SD card. The SD card reader, phone or camera can be the container.
You can change a SD card reader to read it again on your computer.
You can also connect the camera, phone, or another device to the computer with the USB cable.
For some laptop computer or desktop computer with the built-in memory card reader, you need to have an authorized service center look at and repair or replace the memory card reader in your computer.
If you are trying to let your computer read your SD card via the USB card reader, you should try the suggestions below.
Change the USB ports for your SD reader. You can try both the front and back USB ports for connection.
The loose USB connection may lead to the failure of workable SD card.
Make sure the USB connector is securely attached to the USB port. You can verify its connection by disconnecting the USB connector and re-connecting it to the USB port.
Disconnect the USB connector, restart the computer, and then re-connect the USB connector to the USB port.
Sometimes, the USB connection reset may help the reader work properly.
If your USB card reader is capable of reading other types of digital media cards, try reading a different card to test the reader.
If other cards can be read, then your SD card is problematic.
Sometimes, there will be dust or dirt because of the careless protection for chips, thus your phone cannot read SD card.
You are recommended to check that if the metal area is black or there is any spot on it. Try to wipe out the spot gently via alcohol or water with cotton.
For some ultrathin phones, the design of slot is very delicate. The slot will be squeezed if the thickness of battery exceeds certain requirement.
In this case, you can use something to reshape the slot to fix SD card cannot be read by phone problem.
No drive icon or drive icon is outdated will disable you to find your SD card.
No drive icon on your computer?
If there is no drive letter in My Computer to access the SD card, one potential issue may be that your computer is low on virtual memory.
To resolve this issue, close all open programs and allow your computer to idle for a few minutes. Plug in the SD card again and see if the drive letter appears.
Drive is outdated?
The outdated drive will also fail to detect your SD card. For solving this, you need to do the 3 steps below:
Step 1. Connect the SD card to PC.
Step 2. Navigate "This Computer" > "Properties" > "Device Manager" > "Disk drivers".
Step 3. Find and select your USB device, right click and first choose "Uninstall" and then choose "Scan for hardware changes" to refresh the drivers.
Write-protection for some SD cards will disable files to be modified.
The feature is toggled on or off by a switch on the left side of the SD card.
If your SD card has a write-protection switch, make sure it is set to disabled, or in the opposite direction that it points to "LOCK" on the card. Then you can try using the SD card again and see if this fixes the issue.
With some card readers that use and store data on the SD card, the card is formatted much like how a disk drive is formatted when first used in a computer.
In some cases, the device may format the SD card in a way that makes it only readable by that device and nothing else.
For reading SD cards again, you need to reformat the SD card.
Note: Formatting a SD card will erase all contents, and you have to recover data from formatted SD card in the last part in this page.
If your SD card is attacked by virus or malware, then SD card will not be showing up.
For removing the trouble, you can do as following:
Step 1. Plug in your SD memory card to your computer.
Step 2. Go to the start menu, type in "cmd" in a search bar, hit enter and then you can see something named "cmd. exe" under a list of programs.
Step 3. Right-click "cmd. exe" and then you will get the command windows that allows you to recover virus infected files. Type in "attrib -h -r -s /s /d drive letter:\*.*".
For example, "attrib -h -r -s /s /d G:\*.*".
You can try the way to let your SD card show up forcibly.
Step 1. Plug SD card with PC.
Step 2. Open Disk Management tool: press "Windows + R" > Type: "diskmgmt.msc" and hit Enter.
When you connect your phone with the SD card inserted to the computer for Massive Storage option, you may find your micro SD card is not working on your computer.
When removing the barrier, you need to select Media Transfer option, and the Explorer should display the data stored on the memory card.
Particular Android software won't recognize an SD card. Other apps read the SD card and write data on it no problem.
For solving it, you need to go to the "Settings" of the app you have problems with (for example Gallery or Camera) and set SD card as the destination.
As a result of mechanical damage, your phone doesn't see your SD card or the latter stopped working.
For fixing the damaged SD card, you can jump to this post to get the detailed steps: How to fix damaged SD card.
The above solutions focus on fixing the issue of SD card is not reading. If your SD card can show up, but the data are gone for formatting or being corrupted, how to do?
Aiseesoft Data Recovery is the exact remedy.
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Step 1. Insert your SD card to computer, and click USB/SD Card Recovery. Then, choose Scan Disk.
Step 2. After the scanning result is done, you can click the folder in the left sidebar to view the data types to locate your files quickly. Then, click Recover to save the lost files from SD card to computer.
Why does my device not recognize my SD card?
Physical damage, file system errors, driver, improper insertion, or device compatibility problems can all lead to its malfunction.
How can I recover data from a corrupted SD card?
You can use Aiseesoft Data Recovery or some built-in functions like CHKDSK to handle it. But I recommend the first one. Because it only needs a few clicks to get the job done without any professional knowledge.
What should I do if my SD card is not being detected by my computer?
You can try several solutions like checking the card reader, ensuring the SD card is properly inserted, updating the drivers, cleaning the card slot, and testing the SD card on another device to see if the problem is solved.
Conclusion
This article aims at showing you how to fix SD card is not reading or being detected when you are using it. 12 solutions are for you and pick up the best one by yourself. Still, when you lost data from the SD card, you can learn from the bonus tip to get the solution easily.
Do not hesitate to share this post or leave your comments.
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