Fix unreadable SD cards and flash drives

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We've all got unreadable sd cards and flash drives left over from creating install disks for our SBC operating systems. Usually the DOS app DISKPART lets you recover the file system, but sometimes even that ca;n't get them back.
In this video I'll show you a simple trick to take the card back to a recoverable state.
Make sure you check out my main website at
bytesnbits.co.uk/recover-sd-card
0:00 Introduction
1:58 Unreadable in Windows
4:18 Overwrite sd card file system
4:54 Recover SD card

Опубликовано:

31 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 143

@robertlefeuvre9404 Год назад

Thank you for another great video. Your knowledge is greatly appreciated.

@BytesNBits Год назад

Glad it was helpful!

@umutkayacan7659 Год назад

Another banger from Bytes N Bits

@BytesNBits Год назад

Thanks. Good to hear from you again.

@kevindotexe Год назад

Thank you! I had the same exact problem trying to reuse an SD card previously used on Linux and I was starting to lose hope. Thank you once again.

@BytesNBits Год назад

Glad I could help!

@flyingjoed 7 месяцев назад

Perfect sir! Thanks! This repaired my 1tb sd card where others couldn't!

@BytesNBits 7 месяцев назад

Glad I could help

@terrydaktyllus1320 Год назад

I don't use Windows these days (Linux only) but when I did, the "SD Memory Card Formatter" from the SD Association always seemed to get USB drives and SD cards back to a readable format - I won't post a link here but you will find it in an Internet search. As someone said, dd, mkfs and a few other tools are very useful for this in Linux.

@BytesNBits Год назад

Hi. Thanks for the tip. I forgot about that SD card utility app. www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

@terrydaktyllus1320 Год назад

@@BytesNBits It's useful to know, especially as Microsoft don't make it easy to format devices in FAT32.

@AdityaNayak-zl5ty 8 месяцев назад

Thank you very much, this video was of great help!

@BytesNBits 8 месяцев назад

Glad to hear it!

@kychemclass5850 Год назад

Great hack! Thanks.!! I did eventually run into that exact problem of unrecognizable USB drives despite in which your past video wasn't able to cure. I wonder what the Pi software does differently? Perhaps "create partition primary' needs some parameters to "solidify" the partition {maybe create partition primary is only an aspirational setting which solidifies upon formatting?? - seems quite possible to me} or perhaps a create partition secondary type command - as weird as it may appear - might be the trick?

@BytesNBits Год назад

Hi. I guess you're right. I'm sure diskpart or some other utility would be able to get deeper into the file system and do what the flashing software is doing. My knowledge runs out at this level.

@deborahberi3249 10 месяцев назад

Very useful tip for sure. -Mark.

@BytesNBits 10 месяцев назад

Glad it was helpful!

@Ozkar2023 11 месяцев назад

What could have done this to my card where it won't read recognize or show the disc letter ...it was working for about a year and never use or read it on an internet connected laptop or used any apps on it ..I always eject the card before taking it out only few times I turn off the laptop first and take the card out after maybe that was the case the sleeping laptop wasn't off and static messed the card?

@BytesNBits 11 месяцев назад

Cards can just fail. There is a typical number of read and write operations that they should be able to schedule but certain memory locations can fail sooner. Maybe this has happened. Try using diskpart to see if you can save the SD card.

@andrewferguson7762 Год назад

Great work

@BytesNBits Год назад

Thanks. Hope it saves you some cards.

@Poult100 Год назад

Excellent! Thanks for posting. Do you think this would help with drives that have been missold as bigger than they really are? Bring them to display their true size, so to speak.

@BytesNBits Год назад

Unfortunately not. These cards use hacks to report themselves as larger. They really are the smaller size. It's a scam.

@Poult100 Год назад

@@BytesNBits Thanks for your reply. Yes, dreadful scam. Just wondered if at least they could be made to report their true capacity.

@chipstephens9956 Год назад

How do I fix a Kingston ssd drive that is not detected at all by windows or my computer in General? Any advice and step by step Instructions will be greatly appreciated.

@BytesNBits Год назад

Have you tried the drive with a Linux PC? If you've got a SATA to USB converter it will set the drive up as a plugable USB drive so you can work on it without having to install it inside the PC.

@WorkingModelsSchoolProjects 10 месяцев назад

hello frnd do you know how to fix master boot record or how to fix FAT or exFAT of any micro sd card ? i will be very thankful if you please answer me ASAP ?

@BytesNBits 10 месяцев назад

This method should clean most cards. If it doesn't you can try the Linux gparted app which can go a bit deeper than the Windows diskpart.

@dxmj28 2 месяца назад

Thank you for this video very helpful ❤❤

@BytesNBits 2 месяца назад

You are so welcome!

@DuckRotation Год назад

lol thank you for this. I literally just threw a linux distro on a usb drive the other day because someone was trying to retrieve files from a very messed up laptop, but by the time I finished flashing it they had magically gotten them off the laptop anyway. I thought for a second I'd be stuck with a USB linux distro I'll never use. Thanks

@BytesNBits Год назад

Glad it helped

@galaxycraft0075 5 дней назад

Would you have anything on trying to fix scratches on a MicroSD card (apologies for the long comment by the way)? I have game data on a MicroSD for a flash cartridge for my Gameboy Advance that I stupidly used to test to see if an adapter that my friend was going to borrow would work okay. It turns out that it didn't work and I put the MicroSD back into the cartridge. A few days ago I decided I would play my Gameboy Advance, but when I booted the device up, the menu for the flash cartridge popped up saying "Failed to initialize MicroSD card". When I looked at the MicroSD, I noticed that there were scratches on the metal parts; larger than ones you get when just regularly using it. I want to keep the data as I've spent quite a while completing the games on it. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

@BytesNBits 5 дней назад

Scratches shouldn't be an issue unless they are cutting some of the tracks. Can you read the card in a PC reader? Does the PC recognise the card has been inserted? If you can get something to read the card make sure you back it up. Hope you get it working.

@galaxycraft0075 4 дня назад

@@BytesNBits Tried the card in a reader on my laptop, it isn't recognised

@FayazKhan-bm1dm 2 месяца назад

Hello sir, I also have a similar problem. I got a 2 month old samsung sdxc 32 GB SD card. My laptop is not detecting it at all and I have got some crucial data in there... I will be enlightened to know if there's way to retrieve the data from inside it...

@BytesNBits 2 месяца назад

Have a go with this video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NnOgTywuTkw.html. The software will let you delve deeper into the sd card to maybe find the data partition. You can then copy it off the sd card.

@PotatoImaginator Год назад

Happy New Year :)

@BytesNBits Год назад

Thanks. Happy New Year to you too.

@YourFavoriteStickmen 3 месяца назад

So when I insert the sd card, the computer says its unrecognizable. So I tried using diskpart to see if it at least detects it, and I found out that it doesn't. What could have happened to the card?

@BytesNBits 3 месяца назад

Try this alternative method - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NnOgTywuTkw.html. It uses a more in depth piece of software to try to find missing or hidden partitions, etc. If that doesn't see it it looks like the card has been corrupted in some way that stops it talking to the PC. You'll probably have to replace it.

@TelVisions Год назад

Hey does doing this lose all of your photos etc on the sd card?

@BytesNBits Год назад

Yes. This cleans the SD card completely.

@zpt0id951 3 месяца назад

it says there is no disk available but it showed the 29gb microsd... what do I do there to repair it or is it just screwed?

@BytesNBits 3 месяца назад

Try using a PC app called Minitool Partition Wizard - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NnOgTywuTkw.html. It might help. If not I think the card is dead.

@RStreetzAFT Год назад

what if my sd card doens't show up in the list disk section?

@BytesNBits Год назад

You may need to try it on a Linux PC using Gparted. Windows isn't great at doing non Windows things.

@MaksymilianParadys Год назад

Nice but I have a plenty of uSD cards that I wanted to recover but I can't. They are used and I know they are not corrupted/broken but their status in diskpart is "no media" and their size is 0 B. The recording on these cards was somehow protected, but I don't know how. They were used in cash registers. I can select such disk in diskpart but when I try to use "clean", I get "no media in device" error. Do you have any idea how to recover them? ;)

@BytesNBits Год назад

Did you try overwriting it with a Linux OS? The flashing software usually operates at a very low level and auto cleans the card as it writes. You can then use diskpart to recovery the card.

@kychemclass5850 Год назад

You could maybe try a specialist partitioning software? Partition Magic or Gparted.

@pootsplasencia4846 Год назад

Did you get it to work I'm in the same vote as you and been stuck like this for weeks

@MaksymilianParadys Год назад

@@pootsplasencia4846 No, I didn't, none of these all specialized (paid and free) programs available on the Internet is able to erase and reformat such a card.

@shafkatalam7373 Год назад

Umm, what should I do if the SD Card is not even detected on my PC? In the ‘cmd' window, only two Disks are being shown. Disk 0---931 GB Disk----119 GB [N.B.: The size of my SD Card is approximately 16 GB.] Now, what should I don in this case?

@BytesNBits Год назад

Windows isn't the best at this sort of job. If you've got access to a Linux machine try that. The GParted app is sort of the equivalent of diskpart.

@axemanarbor 9 месяцев назад

From what I can see don't do either of those

@PsychoRaze 9 месяцев назад

for me instead of saying disk 2 128 gb it says no media as if it cant recognize anything on the drive i have important client videos on this and i neeed a fix please help someone if possible

@BytesNBits 9 месяцев назад

There's a utility called partition Wizard that has a free home version. That might be able to help.

@shubhamjhanwar6420 5 месяцев назад

As I use raspberry, I am getting "Error writing file to disk"!! By the way, in case of an sd card, what "Raspberry Pi Device" and what "Operating System" to select? I am not getting the option shown in video. I have downlaoded Raspberry v 1.8.5 Please help!

@shubhamjhanwar6420 5 месяцев назад

In my sd card, "list partition" shows 1 partition primary 29 GB (with offset 1024 kb). My sd card isn't getting detected on phone or laptop!!

@shubhamjhanwar6420 5 месяцев назад

In diskpart, when using "clean", I am getting error : The semaphore timeout period has expired. See the System Event log for more information. Please help....

@BytesNBits 5 месяцев назад

If you've got a Windows machine try using Minitools Partition Wizard. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NnOgTywuTkw.html. That should help you see what the state of the SD card is. Sometimes the cards do get corrupted beyond repair. If you can't get anything to clean it, or overwrite it, it might be easier to buy a new one.

@shubhamjhanwar6420 4 месяца назад

@BytesNBits I checked. It says "Bad disk" (file system). Out of 29.81GB it says 29.81GB used (I.e. zero unused space). Under type it says "Logical". Unable to even get options upon right click. Hopeless. Please help if possible; even if data is lost, it's alright (of course, if it can be recovered, that would be best)!

@LoungeAct1978 Год назад

Great video! I have a USB drive that won't even let me write another operating system to it through Rufus or Balena Etcher. Both programs error out.

@BytesNBits Год назад

As a last chance try popping it into a Linux machine to see if that can read anything. You can then use gparted a bit like diskpart to try to recover it.

@LoungeAct1978 Год назад

@Bytes N Bits Oh great idea! I will definitely try that! Thanks!

@JeremydePrisco 17 дней назад

This got me very close, but still having issues with a card. Pi OS app worked fine initially, but verify step failed.

@BytesNBits 14 дней назад

Try this method - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NnOgTywuTkw.html.

@mahmoodaltaay1876 6 месяцев назад

thank you

@BytesNBits 6 месяцев назад

You're welcome

@hungpham2043 2 месяца назад

Followed ur step.. but my micro sd shown 0 B.. is this beyond save?

@BytesNBits 2 месяца назад

Have a go with Minitools Partition Wizard free version. That does a deeper search on the sd card. If that can't get it back then yes you'll need to replace it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NnOgTywuTkw.html

@joelgrebinsilvestri 3 месяца назад

Thank you.. i followed ur steps and format the sd card and now I can see the E Disk I don't know what happened with my sd cards what the E disk was not showing up ... but now I did that and it shows up

@BytesNBits 3 месяца назад

Great to hear you got it working.

@joelgrebinsilvestri 3 месяца назад

desk E is not working for me, is not showing up. i cant even see my sd card, please can u help me

@BytesNBits 3 месяца назад

Have a look at this video. It uses a more powerful disk tool. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NnOgTywuTkw.html

@buttg6118 4 месяца назад

❤

@mikebartlett1774 9 месяцев назад

I got farther with your video than anything previous but once I got to the partition it prompted that there wasn't enough space on my 1tb sd card. this seems to be an RMA at this point

@BytesNBits 9 месяцев назад

Sorry to hear you couldn't get it to work.

@someguy999 Год назад

I had no idea that these could be saved. I've been throwing them away for years )-:

@BytesNBits Год назад

Now you can recycle them. Have fun.

@neogen23 Год назад

Yeah well, in my experience once they're dead, they're dead. No amount of gparted or diskpart or other tools have ever brought back a USB that has reached its limits, let alone an SD card

@BytesNBits Год назад

@@neogen23 Some cards are still functional but just in an awkward format after use. These ones can be saved. If the memory is damaged then yes it's in the bin.

@user-mc5yo1sq4w 11 месяцев назад

It didnt work for me. Raspberry pi imager says "error writing to storage

@BytesNBits 11 месяцев назад

Using Windows to fix the SD cards doesn't always work to clean them fully. I'll be creating a Linux version of this tutorial quite soon which should allow deeper cleaning.

@Chaos101Theory101 Год назад

Might have been worth seeing if GParted would recognise the drive.

@BytesNBits Год назад

Hi. Linux tends to recognise most of these drives and is much better at recovering them without resorting to hacks.

@MikkoRantalainen Год назад

@@BytesNBits Yeah, if the drive is logically okay, that is it can read and write bytes, you can always simply write the first 1MB with zeros and then partition normally. A simple "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=1" from the command line where X is the letter of the inserted drive. Running "sudo journalctl -f" before inserting the drive and then inserting the drive will tell you which letter it gets for that insertion. It will also show any hardware level errors while accessing the card. Now, if you want to recover *data* on the card instead of just repurposing the card, then things get harder.

@BytesNBits Год назад

@@MikkoRantalainen Thanks for the tips. I'll have to try that one out.

@toxotis70 4 месяца назад

i have the same problem... but your method didnt worked. My windows pc cant even see the sd card. There is no info in diskpart... sd card is working fine on my camera though!

@BytesNBits 4 месяца назад

I made an updated version of this video using Minitools Partition Wizard. Have a go with that and see if it can sort it out for you.

@toxotis70 4 месяца назад

@@BytesNBits link please...

@TheTXSaint 8 месяцев назад

Hello. I'm trying this fix on a 32 GB mini SD card (connected to my laptop via a thumbdrive). When showing disk partition, It shows three. My primary at 238 GB, my secondary at 931 GB, and a third (my Mini SD) at 0 GB. When trying to create a primary partition on the SD card, it says that there is "no usable free extent could be found. Does this mean that the Mini SD card is dead?

@imtorpedo 8 месяцев назад

I am also having same issue let know if you get any solution for this

@BytesNBits 8 месяцев назад

Make sure you select the mini sd card first. Are you able to delete the partitions using either the clean command or directly deleting the partitions? If they are still there after you run a delete command it usually means the SD card has become corrupted in some way. If that's the case your best bet is to bin the card.

@amagamingtv85 Год назад

I'm getting an error removing existing partitions using the Raspberry Pi Risc OS... Other methods?

@BytesNBits Год назад

Windows isn't the best at fixing all disks. If you've got a linux based system that usually copes with the more unusual formattings.

@joelgrebinsilvestri 3 месяца назад

my sd card has 7 partitions, what can I do? i followed ur video and I see 7 partitions

@BytesNBits 3 месяца назад

Have a look at this video. It uses a more powerful disk tool. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NnOgTywuTkw.html

@druby_844 10 месяцев назад

What if there's no other disk partition?

@BytesNBits 10 месяцев назад

There are a few cases where Windows can't clean the card. If you've got a Linux machine gparted can sometimes clean a bit deeper.

@druby_844 10 месяцев назад

@@BytesNBits guess I'm doomed then, no Linux machine. Ty for the answer tho

@MrBobWareham 10 месяцев назад

I use Linux Mint to format my SD cards, as you can format NTFS or any format

@BytesNBits 10 месяцев назад

Thanks. I do need to do a Linux version of this as it's a more powerful formattter for SD cards.

@AARADHYAEDITPOINTTNSP 7 дней назад

HI SIR MY SD CARD NOT RAD AND NOT SHOW TO PC NOT READ CAMERA

@BytesNBits 7 дней назад

Sometimes the card can't be fixed using this route. Unless you really need to recover some data I'd probably replace it with a new one.

@javiman 8 месяцев назад

nope, mine doesnt even appear in the list disk section....

@BytesNBits 8 месяцев назад

That sounds very dead to me!

@alukea123 2 месяца назад

@@BytesNBits So if its dead, is the only solution is to send it an expert and have them dissect it transfer it to another hard drive?

@BytesNBits 2 месяца назад

@@alukea123 Is the data really important? I'd first try it in some other systems i.e. Linux / Mac / Android to see if they can see the data. If not then yes, you'll need some professional help.

@notpopbob 6 месяцев назад

My sd card dont even appear on DISKPART

@BytesNBits 6 месяцев назад

Sometimes they are just too corrupted to recover.

@tubeDude48 Год назад

This is all well and good, but how to recover a Flash Drive and NOT loose your data? I also had a drive that says it was ext4, but couldn't read it from WINDOZ OR Linux!

@BytesNBits Год назад

Hi. Your best bet is to use a Linux computer and run some of the disk management packages in that. Probably a good idea for a future video.

@tubeDude48 Год назад

@@BytesNBits - That doesn't work either! I can see the files, can't get to them!

@abhijithr5938 9 месяцев назад

Mine just showing there is no media in the device

@BytesNBits 9 месяцев назад

Sometimes the cards do get corrupted beyond recovery.

@NeshangShrestha 3 месяца назад

@@BytesNBitsis that not fixable??

@lucius1976 Год назад

Is it not easier to plug it in a Linux computer? It is just a Windows problem

@BytesNBits Год назад

Yes. But it's always good to have a pure Windows solution if you don't keep a Linux machine handy.

@lucius1976 Год назад

@@BytesNBits Well, a Linux on a usb stick that you can boot from should suffice

@terrydaktyllus1320 Год назад

Since around Windows XP, Microsoft have never liked their users using FAT32 on any drives and have made it deliberately difficult for them to do so - I suspect they'd like every SD card and USB stick to be pre-formatted to NTFS so that it makes their usage far more controlled by them with a more proprietary file system. If you compare what you could do with the GUI disk formatter in Windows from around, say, Windows 2000 days to now (not that I use that Windows 10 rubbish myself, I got rid of my Microsoft abuser when Windows 7 support ended) but they've made FAT32 progressively more difficult to implement on any drives - hence needing to drop to their crappy command line to be able to do anything at that level.

@semsemsemo6898 Год назад

Ok i just want to get a 3 files from my sd card all of my studies on it photos and PDF file and i want to make it readable

@BytesNBits Год назад

Hi. Don't follow the instructions in this tutorial. This will wipe the SD card clean. You'll need to go back to your original device, or a compatible one, to get the data off.

@semsemsemo6898 Год назад

@@BytesNBits the devises doesn't even read the sd card and i did everything in video but it gave me a weird message ("no useable free extend could be found it maybe the there is insufficient free space to create a partition on the specified size and offset values or don't specify earth to create the partition format and the disk contains ether 4 primary partitions and one extended partition (only logical devises can be created)") Also it says no media on the sd card and the sd card is 8 gb But it says it's 0 b

@BytesNBits Год назад

@@semsemsemo6898 I'm not sure what you can do. If the original device can't read the SD card it looks like it's somehow got badly corrupted.

@semsemsemo6898 Год назад

@@BytesNBits that means all my work gone in the blink of an eye

@BytesNBits Год назад

@@semsemsemo6898 What device is the SD card from? Do you know anyone who has a similar device you can try the sd card in? Do you have access to a Linux PC? These are better at reading unusually formatted SD cards.

@dundermifflinity Год назад

If someone tells me how to successfully get NVMe drives to restore to full capacity, I’ll send them cash for beers/coffee via PayPal or similar. I have 2x 500GB intel M.2 NVMe drives that show as 16GB 1x Samsung 980 1TB M.2 NVMe drives that appears as 32MB 😭 “clean” operations in Disk Part don’t work. Need something lower level. They are effectively useless so I’m willing to try anything.

@dundermifflinity Год назад

FYI- I’ve worked in IT support for 25+ years. I’ve tried all the usual methods

@BytesNBits Год назад

Hi. Have you tried cleaning them using a Linux PC? The utilities in there are usually much better than on Windows. Gparted is the Linux equivalent to diskpart. Good luck.