How to Recover Corrupted Memory Card or SD Card

SD Cards are the best way to exceed your device’s storage limit. They are reliable and convenient storage media that’s also cheap to buy. Due to its portability and effectiveness, SD cards are commonly used in android phones, iPhones, GoPro, DSLR, and many other devices. But, sometimes while handling this media storage, we receive errors like “SD card is damaged. Try reformatting it.”, memory card error, corrupt memory card, etc. So, in this handout, we will discuss how to recover corrupted memory card. Let’s get started.

Storage cards are also prone to corruption and when they get corrupt, the data stored over them are at sake. There is a big probability that you will lose photos, videos, documents and a lot more things stored over them. And there are multiple ways to fix a damaged memory card and recover data from them. But before going for the solutions, let’s see the symptoms of the corruption or failure in this memory storage.

What Are The Signs For SD Card Corruption?

Whenever corruption takes place, you get some signs. It could be an error message, some missing data from your device or SD card goes indetectable by your system. Some of the signs for corruption in the memory card are:

• Missing data elements.
• Error messages for the corrupt media drive.
• Read/Write error messages.
• Unavailability of copy or paste operation.

How To Repair Corrupted Memory Card And Recover Data From It?

Repairing an SD card isn’t an easy task to perform. You have to check for various things and you can also apply these methods that I’ve listed below:

#1 Try To Reconnect It

Have you tried to reconnect the SD Card? If not, then try to reconnect it because it is possible that the pins or contacts are not connected properly. You can also try to give it a wiggle. If it doesn’t work then try to insert it into another port.

#2 Check For The Drivers

There is a chance that the appropriate driver program is not installed or outdated. In that case, follow the below steps:

Step 1. Press Win+R and type Device Manager. Then hit Enter.

Step 2. Double click on the Disk Drives and right-click on the name of your SD card.

Step 3. Select Uninstall from the list and click on the OK button as confirmation.

Step 4. Eject your SD card and restart the system.

Step 5. Reconnect the drive after the restart and your system will automatically detect it.

#3 Change Drive Letter

Changing the drive letter can also help you out in a situation where the memory card is not working or showing error while trying to opening it.

Step 1. Press Win+R key and look for “diskmgmt.msc”. Then hit the Enter Key.

Step 2. Right-click on the micro SD card drive and select the “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.

Step 3. From the freshly appeared window, click on the Change button.

Step 4. Select a Drive letter and click on the Ok button.

Step 5. Restart your computer and re-insert the drive. Check whether the drive can be opened or not.

If the problem still persists then go for the below method.

#4 Look For System Errors

When it comes to knowing how to recover corrupted memory card, there is a probability that a system error is generating issues with the media device. So, let’s try to resolve it.

Step 1. Insert your media device into the port and wait for the detection of the device.

Step 2. Go to My Computer and right-click on the inserted Removable Drive. Select Properties from the menu.

Step 3. From the freshly appeared window, select the Tools tab. In the Error Checking section, click on the Check button. Windows will scan the drive and report back with the results.

Step 4. If there is any problem with system files then another window will pop up. Select Repair drive to start the fixing process. It will take some time to fix the corruption and it also depends upon the size of the drive.

Step 5. You will get an on-screen confirmation when the scan is complete. By clicking on the Show Details, you will get a complete log of all the repairs done over the drive system files.

#5 Use chksdk Command

chkdsk is a Windows utility that can be used to check the integrity of the memory card. You can follow the below steps to use this utility:

Step 1. Connect the SD card to the computer and wait for the detection of the card.

Step 2. Press Win+R and type cmd. Then, hit Enter.

Step 3. Type chkdsk h: /f and hit the Enter key. Here, h is the drive letter and you can replace it with your drive letter.

Step 4. Now, chkdsk will run an integrity test on your storage card and it will try to fix corrupted memory card.

Recheck the SD card after the process if the problem still persists then go for the below method.

#6 Take an Expert Solution

If none of the above solutions works in your case then the data is corrupted badly and you need to go for an expert solution to prevent the data loss. You can opt for the SD card Recovery tool that can successfully recover photos, videos, audios, documents and many other files from the memory drive. The utility is also capable enough to recover deleted data from the SD Card. All the user needs to do id to follow the below steps:

Step 1. Attach the removable media device and wait for the drive to get detected.

Step 2. Download the SD Card Recovery utility and launch it on your Windows system.

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Step 3. Select the drive for recovery and opt for the recovery mode.

Step 4. give the saving location for the recoverable data.

Step 5. Now, the utility tool will give a preview of the scanned data.

Step 6. Click on the Yes button when it says “Do you want to save deleted files?”.

Step 7. Soon the utility will save the recovered data on the desired location.

This will easily recover all the data from the corrupted memory card and the data will get saved o the defined location.

Conclusion

So far, we have discussed the scenarios when the memory card gets corrupted and how to recover corrupted memory card. All the methods are efficient enough to resolve the issue and recover data from a corrupted SD card. If none of the manual method works then I’ve also discussed an expert solution that will definitely help you out in such a situation. I hope, these methods helped you out.

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