problem formatting SD card - General Questions and Answers

Hi All,
I have a problem with my SD card. (Sandisk 32gb).
The SD card was used in an android phone and formatted as internal storage, which I'm guessing encrypts the data as well.
In order to use another card in the phone, the card was removed and 'forgotten' in the phone (yeah... not very smart...)
I have already come to terms with the fact that my data is now lost forever, since the key for the encrypted data was deleted. I'm trying to reformat the card so I can use it again.
The problem: I can't format the SD card.
I've tried the following solutions, which did not work:
- Try to format the SD card using the phone. -> this gives an error message.
- Try to format the SD card using a computer:
The card doesn't show up in explorer, so I worked around using EaseUS partition master, when I try to wipe the disk, or when I try to delete partitions, I get an error. When I do a surface check, the program crashes.
- Try to clear the SD card using DiskPart, which gives a 'Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)' error.
What else could I try?

If you format your SD card directly from a PC, your choices are NTFS (which an Android device can't read) or FAT32 (inefficient & doesn't support files greater than 4G).
The best way to format an SD card is using the official SD Card Formatter from the SD Association:
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
This will format the card as exFAT which is supported by Android, while maximizing storage space.. Download, install, format, enjoy!

EEngineer said:
If you format your SD card directly from a PC, your choices are NTFS (which an Android device can't read) or FAT32 (inefficient & doesn't support files greater than 4G).
The best way to format an SD card is using the official SD Card Formatter from the SD Association:
This will format the card as exFAT which is supported by Android, while maximizing storage space.. Download, install, format, enjoy!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you EEngineer for reacting so quickly!
I've tried the SD card formatter you recommended. However, although the card is recognised by my computer, it is not assigned a drive letter for some reason (I've tried to give it one using disk management, without success (it basically gives a cyclic redundancy check error every time I try to do anything with it)) and it doesn't show up in explorer. It follows that my card is not recognised by the formatting program, and so I can't get it to work.
My hypothesis is that the phone has formatted the card so that it cannot be read by my computer anymore and then threw away the key, so that it cannot be read by anything anymore. (which really sucks, because there's probably nothing wrong with the hardware of the card, and yet I'm going to have to throw it away if I can't get it to work)
Any other ideas?

Josh458 said:
Hi All,
I have a problem with my SD card. (Sandisk 32gb).
The SD card was used in an android phone and formatted as internal storage, which I'm guessing encrypts the data as well.
In order to use another card in the phone, the card was removed and 'forgotten' in the phone (yeah... not very smart...)
I have already come to terms with the fact that my data is now lost forever, since the key for the encrypted data was deleted. I'm trying to reformat the card so I can use it again.
The problem: I can't format the SD card.
I've tried the following solutions, which did not work:
- Try to format the SD card using the phone. -> this gives an error message.
- Try to format the SD card using a computer:
The card doesn't show up in explorer, so I worked around using EaseUS partition master, when I try to wipe the disk, or when I try to delete partitions, I get an error. When I do a surface check, the program crashes.
- Try to clear the SD card using DiskPart, which gives a 'Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)' error.
What else could I try?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried fdisk command?

There has been some time in between posts. Sorry for that. I really appreciate you helping me out.
I'm quite keen to get this issue resolved, since if I don't I've just wasted some money...
[email protected] said:
Have you tried fdisk command?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I have already tried fdisk. It resulted in the same error described above.

Josh458 said:
There has been some time in between posts. Sorry for that. I really appreciate you helping me out.
I'm quite keen to get this issue resolved, since if I don't I've just wasted some money...
Yes, I have already tried fdisk. It resulted in the same error described above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try SD formatter for Windows, it has some tools to diagnose/repair SD cards.
Sent from my LGL84VL using Tapatalk

Related

[Q] Blank SD Card or unsupported file system

I am so depressed right now!
My unrooted nexus one no longer wants to read my SD card. I get the "blank sd card or unsupported file system" notification.
I have tried 3 different sd cards, all reseated several times. All the cards work with computers with a card reader, I have tried factory resetting my phone, from the settings menu and from the "volume down + power" menu. The cards also work with various devices that support SD cards.
If i touch the notification it asks me to format my card, if i say yes it does nothing. If i go into settings I can't mount the sd card : the notification cycles through : "preparing sd card... sd card safe to remove... blank sd card...". If I have tried a format before trying to mount, the notifications do not appear/cycle.
If I try to read on my computer an SD card that I tried to format with my nexus one, the computer states that I need to format the card. Once I format it, it works fine.
I have tried to format with default windows utility as well as the official app you can find by googling "SD Formatter 3.0 for SD/SDHC/SDXC"
I think I have tried everything I can... I have a feeling that this is software related and it persists through wipes or the card reader on my phone is dead.
I don't know what else I can do other than ship it to HTC and before doing that I wanted to ask the community here...
try to format in windows as FAT32 or try to format from other model..say nokia?
mikomarco said:
try to format in windows as FAT32 or try to format from other model..say nokia?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried that as well, forgot to mention
Bumping because I am desperate!

[Q] Damaged SD card storage

Hello,
My Desire S is running on rom BlindMIUI_v2.5.25 which I loaded June 5th of this month. Suddenly since 3 days back it is saying "Damaged SD card storage" and also saying "Format USB storage, erasing all files stored there, action cannot be reversed"
Please advise should I format SD card? Will this solve the problem. If I format then I will try to save files and then will do it and restore the file again.
What happen is that if I reboot is for few time the SD card comes again and for no reason I disappear without any notice.
Please help me if there is any solution.
Brgds
Looks like It's corrupted. A format should fix it. Connect it to your computer via a memory card reader or mount it in recovery and backup everything to your computer if possible. Then do a full format of the card (uncheck quick format in Windows). After that use the 'format sdcard' option in recovery and then copy the backed up data to the phone.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium
format the sd card in a other format
Damaged SD card storage
sashank said:
Looks like It's corrupted. A format should fix it. Connect it to your computer via a memory card reader or mount it in recovery and backup everything to your computer if possible. Then do a full format of the card (uncheck quick format in Windows). After that use the 'format sdcard' option in recovery and then copy the backed up data to the phone.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello sashank,
Thanks for so prompt response. See I have just inserted another SD card and now phone does not get any SD card. It says "SD card is not available". From this it seems to me it is rom problem not the SD card. Am I correct? Should I change the rom and go for a newer version which is MIUI.us-2.6.8 or just a format will do?
Please advise.
Damaged SD card storage
darkion2411 said:
format the sd card in a other format
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello darkion,
The phone is giving the option to format it. Should I do the format through phone or is there any other way to do it. Please advise me in details.
Would appreciate your help.
If your phone is giving an option to format it then use it. I find it strange that it didn't detect the other SD card too, but in any case if it's asking you to format it instead of just not detecting it then it doesn't seem like an issue with the card slot. So format it in the phone and see how it goes. Alternatively, go into recovery-wipe and format-format sdcard. I always use this for formatting my card as it works better then formatting it in the ROM itself, especially when my card gets corrupted.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium
You should not forget to simply clean your sd-card and the slot in your device a little bit. This might be an easy solution, you should at least try it.
Or maybe you've already done .. ?
Damaged SD card storage
sashank said:
If your phone is giving an option to format it then use it. I find it strange that it didn't detect the other SD card too, but in any case if it's asking you to format it instead of just not detecting it then it doesn't seem like an issue with the card slot. So format it in the phone and see how it goes. Alternatively, go into recovery-wipe and format-format sdcard. I always use this for formatting my card as it works better then formatting it in the ROM itself, especially when my card gets corrupted.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello sashank,
What I did is I formatted it in the PC so as in recovery as you said in the earlier response. The phone give the option but it does not work so I could not formatted it through phone.
It seems like working now. Phone shows there is SD card and through file explorer I can go to SD cards file. But only thing is that when I go to SD card files through file explorer, it take few seconds to retrieve the SD card files which never happened before.
Thanks for all your help.
Ok, when you format it in the PC, if you're using Windows, choose a cluster size of 32k in the format window. It gives a better read and write speed, especially read speed. So the SD card shouldn't take that long to show files. In general you'll see the card is giving faster speeds, both on the phone and when transferring files from the computer.
Also there's another way to increase the read speed of the SD card in the phone, which is by setting a higher read ahead speed. If you want to know more you can search about it, but otherwise just install this app SD Speed Increase, set your read ahead speed to 2048kB and tick 'set on every boot'. You shouldn't feel any SD lags after this. This speed increase is only on the phone though, won't reflect if you're transferring files from a computer. You need to be rooted for this to work.

Damaged SD Card

Hi guys,
My phones micro-sd card has been acting strange and was not being recognized at times by my phone. I then proceeded to put it in its SD card adapter and put it in my Mac and got an error saying the card was unreadable. I then put it in a reader on my PC and everytime I try to access the drive it gives me the 2 errors, "You need to format the drive...etc" and after clicking cancel it says that my drive is an unrecognized file format.
Recuva says it can't read the boot sector and running chkdsk gives me the message that the file format is RAW.
Just tried running ReclaiMe file recovery and it says the card is only 30.6MB while it is actually a 32GB card.
Do you guys think there is any hope? Or should I just move on?
Any help would appreciated. Got a lot of pictures and music I would love to save on the drive, plus ROM backups.
Thanks so much
Bump
I've killed an SD card before.. not sure how.. it had been partitioned EXT3 for a rom on a desire.. then re-formatted to normal..
but the problem came months after without notice one day the camera was failing and the gallery wouldn't open..
I tried a new SD card and things were fine so I figured the SD card died
Try to use MiniTool Partition Wizard on your pc, and delete ext partition and swap stay only on fat32. if that does not work format your card to exfat. If that doesn`t work try use program "winhex"(before i used it, my computer hadnt read my card). I repaired my card 3 times these methods.
You can use this ONLY on memory card reader.

Unable to use SD card?!

Hi all,
I recently, erased all data on my SD card (using the "Erase SD card" option in settings > storage). Once this had completed the total space went back up to 7.4GB but available space went to 0.00B! I've rebooted the phone, unmounted and re-mounted the SD card and still available space is set to 0!
What could I possibly be doing wrong?
Thanks,
Use a card reader and connect the SD Card to your computer, if it doesn't show up, use a partition tool to partition the SD Card, such as MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Sadra.. said:
Use a card reader and connect the SD Card to your computer, if it doesn't show up, use a partition tool to partition the SD Card, such as MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the help. What an absolute ball ache though! Why is the "erase" option included if it's going to cause these issues? Would have been better off deleting each folder manually.
RESOLVED
I actually managed to resolve this by erasing from settings a couple more times :S

Recovering an "Adopted" SD Card?

Hi folks,
I have an SD card here that I was using for Adopted Storage but I've managed to get it stuck as an "adopted" card and can't seem to get it back functioning as a normal SD card
Long story short... I wiped the device the card was in but I didn't "unadopt" the SD card before hand - as in set it back to portable mode. While the device could recognise there was an SD card afterwards, it couldn't prepare it for use and suggested a card error or something to that effect.
I figured I'd just pop it in my laptop (Windows 10 x64) and re-format it but this didn't work. Failing this, I decided I'd "nuke" it using Minitools Partition Wizard. While this program had better luck identifying the card, could display and delete the partitions on it and could run the Wipe task - it had no effect on the card... the partitions just re-appear after any attempt to nuke them!
Has anyone any ideas about how I can restore this card back to a normal FAT formated SD card?
Just to clarify - I don't care for the data that might be on it... I just want the card back usable
Thanks
Recovering an "Adopted" SD Card?
The best solution for now would be to plug the sd card into a phone with android 6.0 so that the phone can read the card and then while setting it up,you can format the card as "normal "(the part where it asks you whether to use the card as in adaptive storage or for accessing files).
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Cruzy12100 said:
The best solution for now would be to plug the sd card into a phone with android 6.0 so that the phone can read the card and then while setting it up,you can format the card as "normal "(the part where it asks you whether to use the card as in adaptive storage or for accessing files).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I try this, I get "Unsupported SanDisk SD card"
I'm then asked to select either Portable or Internal and then Erase & Format but neither work. They fail at 20% and the message "Unsupported SanDisk SD card" is shown again
I'm a bit stumped. I thought surely the encryption used on adopted cards was only to stop external reads. It seems in this case it's stopping me from writing to or formating the card
Running out of options

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