Did you ever meet this situation that the SD card cannot be read by your phone or computer? This article will show you what to do when an SD card cannot be recognized by a phone or PC. If you are worried that some data may get lost, you can try using MiniTool Software to recover data from SD card that cannot be read.
Is your phone not reading your SD card for unknown reasons? Browsing forums, we will find many users are also complaining that their micro SD card cannot be read by phone or PC.
In this article, we are going to show you how to fix the two following issues:
- SD card can’t be read by Windows PC.
- SD card can’t be read by the phone.
Part 1. SD Card Cannot Be Read by Computer? What Measures Should I Take?
What can we do if the SD card cannot be read by our computer / laptop? In general, people who have successfully solved the SD card not reading in Windows 10 issue use two methods: recover data from the SD card that cannot be read by PC, and fix the SD card not reading on computer issue via several solutions.
How to recover lost data when your PC cannot read SD card?
Step 1. Recover Important Data from A Micro SD Card that Cannot Be Read
With a powerful, reliable data recovery programs on hand, you will find that recovering SD card data is not as difficult as you imagine.
MiniTool Software company has been dedicated to developing high-quality, innovative data recovery solutions, partition management, data backup and restore tools to millions of users from 180+ countries and areas for over 10 years. Trusted by industry experts around the globe, MiniTool software products have got featured by a lot of authoritative technology sites such as PCWorld, TechRadar, CNET, FileHorse, Softpedia, LifeHacker, etc.
Both MiniTool Power Data Recovery and MiniTool Photo Recovery can help to effectively recover SD card data without affecting the original data thanks to their excellent performance, high security and simple operations. In the test, I used MiniTool Photo Recovery because I only stored photos and videos on the SD card.
Here is some preparatory work to do before you recover data from SD card that cannot be read by PC. Please download MiniTool Photo Recovery, install it on Windows computer, and then connect the SD card to PC with your card reader.
Follow this tutorial to recover data when your PC can’t read SD card
Launch MiniTool Photo Recovery program, after that, click Start button to start SD card photos and videos recovery.
You will notice MiniTool Photo Recovery can not only recover data from SD card, but also supports computer hard drive/USB drive data recovery. More importantly, camera users can directly connect their device to computer and then run this software to recover lost data.
Select the SD card that cannot be read by PC, after that, click on Scan button located at the lower right corner to begin scanning on the device.
Click on Setting option to specify needed file types before clicking on Scan button. If only want to recover some JPEG images, you can check JPEG Camera File (*.jpg) and JPEG Graphics file (*.jpg), and then click on OK button to confirm (The screenshot is shown below).
After scanning is completed, you will see this scan results in a tree view as shown below, and the types of recovered files are displayed in the left list. Now, you can double-click to preview each picture, select all the pictures you need as well as other SD card data, and click on Save button to store them.
It is highly recommended to store selected files on another drive. Otherwise, the lost/deleted data will be overwritten and become unrecoverable.
After getting the lost, important data back, let us proceed to fix SD card not reading in Windows 10 issue.
Step 2: Choose a Method to Fix SD Card Can’t Be Read by PC
2.1. Format your SD card
Open Windows Explorer, right-click the SD card, choose ” Format…” button.
Specify file system, volume label. Next check the ”Quick Format”, and then click on the “Start” button.
Afterward, you will receive an error message that says “WARNING: Formatting will erase ALL data on this disk. To format the disk, click OK. Because you have recovered lost data from this SD card, now you need to click on the ”OK” button to continue.
When you get a message saying “Format Complete.” , it’s time to click on OK.
If the above-mentioned method doesn’t work, you can try running CHKDSK to scan for errors.
Method 2. Run CHKDSK to repair the unreadable or corrupted micro SD card
Press Windows+X to open the Power User menu, afterward, click on “Command Prompt (Admin).” In the new Command Prompt window, please type chkdsk E: /f /r /x. (You should replace E with your correct micro SD card letter.)
If your computer still can’t read your SD card trying the above two methods, it’s very likely that you need a new SD card. Like any other storage media, SD cards deteriorate over time depending on where it is used and how frequently it is used.
Now, we will move on to another issue – why cannot the phone read SD card and how to solve this issue.
Part 2. SD Card Cannot Be Read by Phone – Is There a Solution?
SD card is widely used to increase internal storage space of Android mobile devices. Occasionally users will get in the trouble that phone can’t read SD card even after plugging for a few times. Now, check the following common scenarios to diagnose the problems and how to solve them.
Scenario 1. The SD chip is dirty.
Sometimes, dust or dirt will cause your phone to not be able to read SD card. To check if there is such a problem, take a closer look to see if the metal area is black or there is any spot on it. When you find some spots, you can wipe them gently by using cotton with alcohol or water, and then insert the SD card in when it gets dry.
Scenario 2. That SD card is formatted improperly.
The forms of phones and computer formatting are not the same. For instance, FAT32 cannot be read in Lenovo Motorola E680. That being said, if your SD card is formatted with FAT32, you should reformat it to FAT16 to make E680 recognize it.
There is an important thing to remember: Formatting will delete all the data from your SD card. You had better make a back up for your important data and documents before formatting the SD card.
Scenario 3. The wires inside of the slot have rusted or bent over.
Some mobile phones support hot-plug. However, frequent plug-in and out makes the wires bend over, and then you will meet a situation that the SD card can’t be read by phone. If the wires are located at the same position, you might check the slot under light, and try to bend the wires back.
Scenario 4. The slot is squeezed.
The design of slot is very delicate on ultra-thin phones. The slot will be squeezed if the thickness of battery exceeds the specific requirement. You are recommended to change the battery to the original battery and use something to reshape the slot so the SD card could be read again.
Scenario 5. SD card gets infected with spyware or a virus .
If the SD card gets virus on computer, your phone will not able to read it anymore. There is a good solution – recover data from SD card that cannot be read by phone, and then format it to FAT16 on the computer.
Recommendation:
To recover data from SD card after virus attack, you can try using MiniTool Photo Recovery. Alternatively, you can also try other tools such as MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android Free to recover data from Android SD card, because it offers an excellent feature – Recover from SD-Card to help you restore data from SD card that cannot be read by Android in a simple and effective way. Here are the steps you need.
Download, install and launch MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android to enter its main UI, after that, click on “Recover from SD-Card” to restore data when phone can’t read SD card.
Use a card reader to connect your SD card to the computer, on which you have installed this professional Android data recovery software, then click on “Next” button to continue.
Select the SD card you wish to recover its data and then click on “Next” button to start the scanning process.
MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android will begin to analyze SD card and automatically scan the data saved on the card.
Select all the files that you need, and then click on “Recover” button to store them in a safe place.
Scenario 6. Your mobile phone is broken.
If you phone is broken, it can’t recognize SD card, you’ll need to hand over your device to a Service Center for repairs.
