How to Repair a Corrupted Pen Drive or SD Card

In this article, I am going to list down various methods that will help you to repair corrupted SD card or Pen Drive. Very often we face a problem with a corrupted storage device and this guide will definitely answer all your questions.

Dealing with a corrupted SD card or Pen Drive is a tedious task. We spend hours trying to get our saved files back to working order, but nothing works. So, it's time to look at our options.

As for the SD card, you will need to insert it into the slot on computer or using a card reader. Use an adapter if you have a microSD card. It will not work if you connect a device that has an SD card, such as a smartphone or camera.

Different methods to repair corrupted Pen Drive or SD cards:

Change the drive letter

Sometimes your computer is unable to assign drive letters (such as C, D, E) to your storage media. Because of this, it cannot access the files on them. To resolve this issue, you can assign the drive letter to your device yourself.

Here you can see how to perform it:

1. Connect the 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 for Windows to load the Virtual disk service.
4. Right-click on your storage media and click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click on the letter (it will turn blue) and click the Change.
6. Select the drive letter from the drop down menu. Click OK.

Try using it on another computer

Maybe the issue is specifically on your computer. Try connecting the SD card or Pen Drive to another computer. Hopefully, this might work and you will be able to backup your data from it.

Reinstall the drivers

There is a chance that the drivers running on your Pen Drive have been corrupted and, thus, the computer will not be able to detect your storage media. You can reinstall the drivers through the following simple steps:

1. Right-click on My Computer/This PC. Click Manage.
2. Select Device Manager from the left side.
3. Double-click on Disk Drives in the list. Right-click on the pen drive name.
4. Click the Uninstall and press OK.
5. Disconnect the storage media and restart your computer.
6. Plug your pen drive back in. Your computer will detect it.

Repair Corrupted SD Card or Pen Drive Using Windows Explorer

This is the most commonly used procedure to repair a storage device connected to your computer.

1. Open My Computer or This PC.
2. Select the damaged drive and right-click.
3. Click Format in the drop down menu.
4. Click Restore Device Defaults in the pop-up window.
5. Click the Start to begin the Format process. You can uncheck the Quick formatif you want your computer to thoroughly scan the disk/card for errors, but this will take time. So, uncheck it only if it fails on the first try.
6. Click OK on the next dialog box that will warn you that your data will be lost. The formatting process will be completed in a few minutes and you will have a problem-free SD card or pen drive.

Repair Corrupted SD Card or Pen Drive Using CDM

This process involves the Windows command prompt which is commonly known as CMD. In it, you will need to enter some CMD commands and Windows will format your corrupted card/drive.

1. Connect the damaged media to your computer.
2. Place your mouse on Start and right-click.
3. Click on Command Prompt (Admin). A CMD window will open.
4. Type diskpart and press Enter.
5. Type list disk and press Enter. A list of all storage devices connected to your computer will appear.
6. Type select disk and press (Example: select disk 1). Important: Make sure you enter the number correctly. Otherwise, you may format your internal hard drive. You can type list disk again to check if you did everything correctly. There will be an asterisk (*) before the name of the selected disk.
7. Type clean and press Enter.
8. Type create partition primaryand press
9. Type active.
10. Type select partition 1.
11. Type format fs=fat32 and press Enter. The formatting process will complete in a few minutes. You can write ntfs instead of fat32 if you want to transfer files larger than 4 gigabytes. Do not close CMD.

Recover your lost data

You can use Sandisk Rescue Pro to recover your data in case you have deleted your files or formatted your SD card/ Pen Drive by mistake. The SD card must be in working condition to perform the recovery process. Other notable data recovery software is Recuva by Piriform.