Have you ever found yourself about to show off your great photos from your weekend getaway, only to get this message: ”unable to use card.” Well you’re not alone and its not a problem, there’s a solution!
Things You’ll Need:
- SD Card
- Computer
- Internet Connection
Step 1 – Which method to use.
Method 1 – What do you need to do? If your need is to repair a corrupted SD card so that you can use it to store files then proceed to step #2.
Method 2 – If your goal is to recover the files on the SD card without erasing them, proceed to step #5. (Note this works most of the time some times the like any data storage device the data and hardware can become too damaged)
Step 2 – Reformatting your SD card with a camera.
Insert your SD card into the digital camera’s card slot and choose to format your card from the menu. If this doesn’t work then move on to the next step…
Step 3 – Reformatting your SD card with a computer.
Place the SD card into your computers SD card slot or into a card reader.
PC – From “my computer” right click on the SD card drive letter, IF it appears and choose to “format.”
MAC – From “disk utility” select the disk, IF the Disk mounts, then from the erase tab, select “erase”.
If this doesn’t work, proceed to the next step…
Step 4 – Programs to reformat.
www.sdcard.org You will need to go to the website http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter/eula/
Here you will download, install, and run the program to format your SD card. This is the most advanced step of the three, but most likely to work 99% of the time.
Step 5 – Recover files on your SD Card.
If you want to recover files ON your
SD without erasing them, then you need to download and run the software on this site. http://www.cardrecovery.com/os.asp This is one of the better programs that I have used, you can download the free version so that you can test to see if it can recover your photos.
Once you have recover your photos go to step #2 and reformat the SD card.
Good luck,
James
The link to the formatting software is broken, but I found where it has moved to.
The new link is here..
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/eula_windows/
I know this post is quite old, but thank you so much! This helped me incredibly. Just as I thought my phones micro-SD card was completely shot and I had to fork out the money to buy a new one, which I really cannot afford at the moment, I followed the instructions, and Disk Utility brought it back to life! Hooray!
none of this will worl (im on a mac) and im very frustrated. fuck this
This is aweeeesome!
To X, you have more things to worry about than some simple memory card, you actually paid money for a mac. Good luck with that!
When i format through the software which is described in this post then it is coming written that THE MEMORY CARD IS WRITE-PROTECTED.