10 Methods on How to Fix The ‘SD Card Not Reading’ Error

Rdatarecovery

5 years ago

Summary: It’s a recurrent case when your SD card not reading on phone or when you plug into PC’s card reader. You do not need to be anxious, today in this article we will discuss how to fix the ‘SD Card not Reading‘ error and recover if there is data loss in both no sweats using Bitwar Data Recovery Software.

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SD card is a good medium for the storage of any digital media such as photos, audios, video clips in camcorders, cameras, MP3 players, and Android phones or any device with memory card support. When sd card not showing up on computer or phone not detecting sd card, we’ll have to know the reasons why the SD card can’t work as normal, just check the following causes.

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10 Common Reasons Why SD Card Not Reading

SD card formatted incorrectly (the file system is not compatible with Windows)
Bad sectors and/or read copy errors
Damaged file structure due to virus infection
SD card is broken
USB port not working or incorrect
SD card driver not updated or lost
USB port congested
SD card is physically damaged
SD card not compatible with the device
File manager needs to be changed

After presenting the reasons, let us proceed on how to fix this error. Below is the troubleshooting you must try.

Other SD Issue: 4 Ways to Fix the ‘SD Card Keeps Unmounting’ Issue

7 Methods of Fixing SD Card not Reading Error

Method 1: Test the SD Card into Another PC

Insert your SD card into another PC’s card reader and check if your SD card works. If the PC is able to read your SD Card then the culprit might be the card reader and vice versa.

Another workaround is to insert your SD card in digital media like phone and connect it to your PC with a USB cable to check whether it can be detected or not.

Method 2: Check the USB Connector

Sometimes, you may use the USB connector, then you need to check the connection of the USB connector if its properly attached to the USB port.

By verifying the connection, you can plug the USB connection out from USB port after removing securely from the computer.

You can also try to restart the PC then reconnect the USB connector to the USB port again.

Method 3: Put a Little More Pressure in Inserting SD Card

When the SD card is not detected, the only sole solution might be a little force to make sure that the SD card is firmly inserted in the slot.

Method 4: Clean SD Card and Reader

Clogged SD card and reader due to dirt and dust might be the reason for poor connection resulting in an SD card that cannot be detected. In cleaning your SD Card, lightly wipe the dirt off with a cotton cloth dipped in little alcohol or water.

For your card reader, use a compressed air device that can blow the dust off. Contact cleaner is also available on the internet if you want to purchase.

Method 5: Update card Reader Driver

This can be done either manually or automatically. For manual driver update, just proceed to the manufacturer’s website and search for the recent correct driver. Try searching both in the PC’s manufacturer and card reader manufacturer. You may also do the steps below:

Insert SD Card into your PC’s card reader.
Go to Navigate Control Panel – System – Device Manager– Disk drivers
Right-click your USB device and select Uninstall and choose Scan for hardware changes to refresh the drivers.

Method 6: Assign the New Drive Letter for SD Card

If the above troubleshooting can’t work to fix the ‘SD card not reading‘ error, try to assign the new drive letter for the SD card.

Press Win+ R and then type: diskmgmt.msc, right-click on your SD card device, and choose Change drive letter and paths and click Change, assign a new drive letter and follow the steps as shown in the windows.

After that, I would like to recommend you to recover the data first from the SD card, as the precious data inside the SD card is important than the SD card itself sometimes.

Recover data from SD card not reading on a computer

Bitwar Data Recovery Software is user-friendly and no expert skills needed to recover your files. This will solve your question on how to restore data from an inaccessible memory card. Just plug in your SD card back on your PC and if it still showing in the Disk Management.

Then you can have a good chance to retrieve data first before fixing the SD card.

Simply Download the Bitwar SD Card Recovery Software and install it to the different partition, after launching the software, you can then follow steps below to get back data from the SD card.

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Select your SD card and choose a recovery mode.
Select the File type you wish to recover.
Scan and Preview the data, and then hit the Recover button to save the data into different device or partition.

Once done, we can then do some extra operations to make the SD card visible again on the computer.

Other 3 Extra Methods to Make SD card Visible on PC

Method 8: Using CHKDSK Command

In the search box, type cmd and click Run as Administrator.
In the command window, type CHKDSK followed by the drive letter assigned to your SD card then the colon and /f. Click Enter. The CHKDSK will try to fix how to repair corrupted memory card not detected in PC.

Reconnect the SD card and check.

Method 9: Format SD Card using CMD

Press Win+R and type: CMD
After opening the command window, type: Format F: /q (Change the drive letter F to your assigned one)
Hit ENTER button on your keyboard and wait for the process to finish.

Method 10: Format SD card in Disk Management

Enter to Disk Management and right-click on the SD card device.
Choose Format and perform a quick format.

Conclusion

We have high hopes that you have gained relevant information on how to fix the ‘SD Card not reading‘ error issues. For more issues regarding your devices, download Bitwar Data Recovery to restore first your files before any disaster happens.