SD Card is commonly used in our daily life, but no matter how high-quality SD card you used, no one can guarantee that the SD card will not be damaged and the files inside will not be lost forever. Cause accident always happens. It is annoying that can’t access your important files stored on the SD card due to corruption. Fortunately enough, we still got some methods to recover files from corrupted SD cards.
Part 1. Common Situations of SD Card Corruption
If you found that you suddenly can’t access any data stored on the SD card, it might be the signal of SD card corruption. There are many factors that will cause SD card corruption, the most common factors are:
- Bad sectors in SD Card
- Change in file format
- Physical damage
- Malware or virus infection
- Manufacturing defects
- Improper operation, etc. Problems can also arise if the USB was not booted properly.
Part 2. How to recover files from corrupted SD Card
By using different data recovery software and tools, we can recover files from a corrupted SD Card.
2.1 Using Professional Data recovery tool Tenorshare 4DDiG
We can recover data by using Tenorshare 4DDiG on Mac and PC. Tenorshare 4DDiG Data Recovery Software is a recovery tool to recover almost everything. It can recover data from SD card, USB, hard drive and so on.
Why you should use TenorShare?
1- Support 1000+ types of data types(photos, music, words, and so on).
2- Supports Windows and mac OS
3- It can recover data from both internal and external devices, including SD card, USB, Hard drive, external hard drive and so on
Follow the simple steps and recover files from corrupted SD cards.
- Launch 4DDiG on your PC, then connect your SD card to your PC, choose the location where you lost files(for example SD card)
Choose the file type you want to scan and click on “Scan”
2. Now 4DDiG will take time to scan your SD card, once it is done, all the scanned out files will be listed on the interface
3. You can preview the scanned out files, choose the files you want to recover, then click on “Recover”, and that all, your lost files will be back soon.
2.2 Find the local Repair Center
You can get help from local retailers of hardware and software or computer shop. Taking advice from an IT expert can help you a lot, when encountering problems such as corrupted sd card files recovery
2.3 Using Windows File Recovery
1- Press the Windows key, enter Windows File Recovery in the search box, and then select Windows File Recovery.
2- When prompted to make changes to your device, select Yes.
3- There are 2 basic modes you can use to recover files: Regular and Extensive.
Depending on your preferred choice it will recover files from your SD Card.
2.4 Looking for the Backup files of the corrupted files
You can recover files when your SD Card is corrupted by looking for a backup of its files. Like whether you have sent the files by email or other places.
Part 3. Other Ways to Recover Corrupted SD Card
Memory card gets corrupted due to a lot of reasons, some of which are mentioned above. But gladly, there are a lot of ways to recover your corrupted SD Card. These methods are easy to follow and heavily detailed so every one of you can follow.
3.1 Reconnect the SD Card
If your laptop has a built-in SD Card reader, we recommend you purchase a USB card reader. Try connecting the card with different USB ports of your device multiple times. Sometimes due to improper operations or bad sectors, SD Card gets damaged, so you should first connect it with a different computer to double-check if the problem is really in SD Card.
This is the easiest fix you can try, which is why it is listed above. If this doesn’t work for you, try these other ways to fix corrupted/damaged SD cards.
3.2 Using CHKDHK
CHKDSK is a command-line utility available in all versions of Windows for checking file systems and its metadata for physical and logical errors.
1- Type ‘cmd’ in the search box on the taskbar and click on “Run as administrator”
2- Enter the following command (replace X with the letter assigned to the SD card you want to fix) and press Enter: chkdsk X: /f (The /f parameter tells CHKDSK to fix all kinds of errors with a memory card.)
- Wait for the command to finish. This may take several hours depending on your SD Card’s size.
3.3 Assign a new drive letter
To your surprise, many SD Card errors can be fixed just by assigning another drive letter to the SD Card. This has something to do with conflicting drive letters when your OS updates drive letter information improperly.
1- Type “disk management” in the search box and click on “Create and format hard disk partition”.
2- Right-click on SD Card and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths” option.
3- Click the “Change…” option/button.
4- Select a new drive letter and click the “OK” button.
5- Click “OK” again to close the window.
3.4 Use the ATTRIB command or DiskPart command
We can solve problems with our SD Card by cleaning it using the DiskPart command which is available in most Windows versions.
Using diskpart to clean the SD Card:
1- Connect the SD card to your PC. Press Windows + X, then click “Command Prompt (Admin)”.
2- Write “diskpart” in the command prompt window.
3- Type in the following command lines and hit Enter (each time):
- list disk
- select disk X
- attributes disk clear read-only
Replace X with the assigned number of your SD card.
Now you should be able to open your SD card and access the saved files again.
3.5 Reformat the SD Card
Formatting the SD Card is an easy way to fix corrupted SD Card.
1- Go to “This PC”, then right-click on your SD Card and select the “Format”
2- Click “Start” to format the SD Card.
The difference between Quick Format and Full Format is that the latter scans the device for bad sectors, while the former removes address files from it.
3.6 Reinstall your Drivers
Windows automatically installs the most recent drivers through Windows Update, but sometimes we have to do it manually.
- Type “device manager” in the search box and select Device Manager.
2- Right-click on your SD Card (it is usually under Portable Devices), and select Update driver
3- Go to Search automatically for updated driver software>Update Driver.
3.7 Check SD Card for malware
SD Card can get infected with viruses when connected to a Virus infected system, by transferring malicious files to a memory card or exploring malicious websites while using SD Card.
1- Plugin virus-infected SD card to the system, and go to Start menu -> type cmd -> Enter
2- Right-click exe -> type “attrib -h -r -s /s /d drive letter:*.*”. When the operation is completed successfully, check the state of the card.
3.8 Use Windows Repair tool
We can repair our corrupted memory cards by using the Windows SD card repair tool:
1- Press Windows + E to open Windows Explorer and select “This PC” from the left panel.
2- Right-click on the SD card and click on “Properties”.
3- Switch to the “Tools” tab and select the “Check” option.
4- Click “Scan drive” to begin to scan and repair the SD cards if errors are found.
Conclusion
We listed some common reasons for files on the SD Card and SD Card getting corrupted. If your precious data is deleted or you’re unable to use your SD Card because it has been damaged, then this article will prove much valuable for you.
We talked about different methods to fix the corrupted SD card.
