Using Manual Techniques to Perform SD Card Recovery

author
Published By Jamie Kaler
Rollins Duke
Approved By Rollins Duke
Published On November 16th, 2023
Reading Time 6 Minutes Reading
Category Tips and Tricks

This is a universally known fact that we all depend on smartphones for most of our work. However, sometimes we forget that our dependence on the devices also shared with their storage. Speaking of storage, built-in storage has never been enough for us. Therefore, the function of the removable storage media arose due to the SD card. However, like any other technological invention, even these portable data storage banks are vulnerable to a number of problems such as; Formatting, corruption, and more. The following document describes the scenarios in which such conditions dominate the user. Also, how users can take charge of the situation by putting the matter in their hands.

Learn How SD Card Recovery Perform with a Tool with this Page.

What Causes the Failure of SD Cards?

SD cards generally do not encounter downtime because we understand the importance of backups based on our knowledge of possible outages. Therefore, most smartphone users are well-equipped with their data backup. Yet not everyone falls into the same category, which is why most people find themselves in a situation where they become helpless to fight back.

Causes of Failure: Reportedly, memory cards / SD cards / removable storage media are built with a limited lifespan. It is recommended that you do not use such storage media for more than a few years. The more write/copy/ erase operations are performed, the lower the life of an SD card. About 10,000 such operations can be performed with a flash card unit.

 Consequences of the SD Card Failure

  • Some of the media stored like photos or videos will disappear from your SD card.
  • Errors constantly received while using the device or its storage indicating ‘memory card error’ or ‘corrupt memory’
  • The connection and reading of the SD card in a computer also shows empty storage, without folders or data inside.
  • A “write-protected” error received each time a copy operation is performed on the storage of the SD card through a computer that was not available on the smartphone.
  • When trying to access from a computer, storage of the SD card shows problems indicating that ‘SD card is not formatted. Format it now ‘to provide access.

Top Five Ways to Perform SD Card Recovery

Solution No. 1: Confirm the compatibility of the SD card on your device by connecting it to another device. Compatibility issues generally occur with smartphones and most of the times user are not aware of this. Therefore, it is necessary to be sure, whether the issue you are facing is actually an issue or just a fault due to certain technical glitches.

Solution No. 2: Connect the SD card to your machine using a card reader. Then, follow the steps to proceed:

  • Go to the Start menu on your computer. Then, Click on the Computer.
  • Look for the SD card under the section ‘Devices and Removable Storage’ and take note of the drive letter.
  • Right-click to run the cmd. Also, select Run as Administrator.
  • Type ‘chkdsk’ along with the drive letter representing the SD card.
  • Add a colon, /f and press Enter.
  • Chkdsk will perform a necessary and suitable diagnosis to fix the SD card.
  • Follow the prompts that follow.
  • Finally, check the SD card to confirm whether the files in it have recovered or not

Solution No. 3: Perform a check by connecting your device to the system using a card reader.

  • Now, if the storage assigned a drive letter. Then, the system able to read it.
  • If no drive letter assigned to the card, the system gets unable to read it.

Note, that in some cases the system may provide a drive letter for your removable storage. However, an error also displayed: “Please insert the disk in drive E:”. This indicates that the card gets unreadable.

Now, in order to fix this situation, assign another drive letter to the storage media via Operating System settings. Also, see if this makes any difference.

Some More Solution to Fix SD Card Issues

Solution No. 4: If no files are readable on the drive, there is a possibility of the drive listing the file names. However, the files are still not accessible.

  • Right click on the drive letter. Then, select ‘Properties’

If despite doing this, you can see the storage details of the card showing all free space, the probability is that all files have been erased or the entire directory itself.

Solution No. 5: If the files are readable but cannot be stored, then the card is possibly in write-protected mode. Unlock the switch and either save or modify the data on the card.

However, on continued unavailability to read or write data to card, the consequences indicate that the files get lost or have become unavailable for access.

TIP: A disk diagnostic tool used for working out on the issue of memory cards as well.

The access to the card can simply be regained by reformatting it, but this will erase all its contents permanently. Therefore, if the card stores important files, reformatting it would not be a suitable option. In such a case, it becomes necessary for the users to first regain access to their data somehow and then reformat the card to get rid of the issue surfacing on it.

Conclusion:

SD Cards are as delicate as important they are to us. Therefore, it is necessary for users to take measures for protecting these portable mini storage media with carefulness. Attaching SD cards to infected machines or connecting them with the help of unreliable or incompatible card reader result in making their survival difficult. This is how users generally lose access to both; their SD cards and its storage. Fixtures of different sorts are applicable depending upon the condition of the SD card. In some case, you might have to perform a reformatting while in others; you can simply use CMD utility by Windows to fix the issue at your own end. The segment above only discusses SD card recovery procedures that are executable with the sole use of manual techniques and not third party (commercial) applications.