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Fix: Corrupted SD Card Or Pen Drive Using Simple Steps

Dealing with a corrupted SD card or pen drive is a tedious task. You spend hours to get back your storage into working conditions but get nothing.

You might have seen the same thing on online forums that are full of questions like "My pen drive is corrupted" or "My SD card is not working."

In this article, I am going to tell you about various methods that will help you to repair your corrupted SD card or pen drive.

Whenever we face the problem of a corrupted storage device, and we can fix the problem using a few CMD commands. If the command prompt isn't your thing, you can also attempt a USB drive.

How to fix a corrupted SD card in simple steps?

*Change the drive letter
*Try another USB port
*Try to use it on another PC
*Reinstall the drivers
*Fix SD card/USB drive without formating
*Fix SD card/USB drive using Windows Explorer
*Fix SD card/USB drive using Windows CMD
*Remove bad sectors
*Use third-party tools to repair corrupt SD card or flash drive
*What to do if it gets broken permanently

For the SD card, you will have to insert it into the slot provided on your computer or by using an external card reader. Use an adapter, if you have a microSD card.

It will not work if you connect it via a device having an SD card slot like a smartphone or a camera. For attempting pen drive repair, you don't need any such accessory. Check out these different methods.

Use the SD card repair tool from the device maker

You might not be aware but many storage device makers like SanDisk, Kingston, Samsung, Sony, etc. provide their own low-level utilities for formatting and other repair purposes. Such tools can be used to fix and restore SD cards and flash drives to their full capacity.

You can find these tools by visiting the websites of the device makers or by contacting their customer support. In my own personal experience, such an alternative SD card and USB drive repair methods have turned out to be quite useful.

SD Association which publishes official specifications for memory cards also provides an SD card repair tool called SD Formatter which can be used to revive SD, SDHC, and SDXC cards. It's available for both Windows and macOS.

1 Change the drive letter

Sometimes your computer is unable to assign drive letters (like C, D, E) to your storage media. Due to this reason, the files on it can't be accessed. To resolve this issue, you can assign the drive letter to your storage device manually.

Here are the simple steps to fix the corrupted pen drive or memory card by assigning a correct drive letter:

1. Connect your storage media to your computer.
2. Right-click on My Computer/This PC. Click Manage in the drop-down menu.
3. Click Disk Management on the left side and wait for a few seconds so that Windows can load the Virtual disk service.
4. Right-click on your storage media and click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click the drive letter (it will turn blue) and click Change.
6. Select the drive letter from the drop-down list. Click Ok.

2 Try another USB port

Although it sound's strange, you're wasting your time if you repeatedly try to connect your SD card or flash drive to a single USB port on your computer. It could be possible that the port itself is damaged or some software issue is to be blamed. So, try other USB ports if your USB drive or SD card is not getting recognized.

3 Try to use it on another PC

Maybe the issue is specifically on your PC, and that's why you are having trouble running the USB flash drive. Try connecting your SD card or pen drive to another computer. Hopefully, it may work, and you'll be able to access the data stored on it.

4 Reinstall the drivers

There are times when the drivers that run your pen drive get corrupted and your PC will not be able to detect the storage media. You can reinstall drivers and fix a corrupted SD card by following these steps:

1. Right-click on My Computer/ This PC. Click Manage.
2. Click on Device Manager on the left side.
3. Double-Click Disk Drives option on the list. Right-click on the name of your pen drive/SD card.
4. Click Uninstall. Click Ok.
5. Disconnect your storage media and restart your PC.
6. Connect your pen drive again. Your PC will detect it and reinstall the drivers.

5. Repair corrupted USB drive or SD card without formatting

One of the tested and tried ways to repair bad storage media is by using the Check Disk tool that comes preloaded in Windows 10 (and older versions). This way you won't need to format your corrupt SD card or flash drive to repair it.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Connect the storage media to your computer.
2. Note down the drive letter.
3. Open CMD in Administrator mode.
4.  Type the following command:
chkdsk E: /f (Here, E is the drive letter)
5. Press Enter. The check disk tool will scan your USB drive or SD card and fix the underlying problem. It works in most cases.

6. How to fix a corrupted SD card or Pen Drive using Windows Explorer

Windows 10 (and older versions) comes with an in-built SD card repair tool that can be accessed via Windows Explorer. So, in the following steps, I'm going to tell you how to format a corrupt SD card or pen drive:

1. Open My Computer or This PC.
2. Right-click on the corrupt SD card or USB drive.
3. Click Format in the drop-down menu.
4. Click Restore Device Defaults in the popup window.
5. Click Start to begin the format process. You can uncheck the Quick format option if you want the computer to deep scan the drive/card for errors, but this will take time. So, uncheck it only if you fail in the first attempt.
6. Click Ok in the next dialog box which will warn you that the data will be lost. The format process will complete in a few moments, and you will have your error-free SD card or pen drive.