What is an SD Card?

In the computer world, An SD card is a removable storage device about the size of a postage stamp, or smaller, that can hold tremendous amounts of data. These storage cards are commonly found in digital cameras or as micro SD cards in smartphones. You can store tremendous amounts of data on SD cards, but they tend to cost significantly more than USB flash drives. Still, SD cards offer a portable storage option that tablet and smartphone owners appreciate.

It is also called Secure Digital Memory Card) A family of compatible and very popular flash memory cards used primarily for storage in cameras and phones. Introduced in 1999 by Panasonic, Toshiba and SanDisk as the successor to the MultiMediaCard (see MMC, the SD technology is managed by the SD Association (www.sdcard.org).

The full name of an  sd card is a secure data card. They come in regular format, mini format, and micro format. The mini and micro formats can be put into a special adapter that allows them to be read with the standard-size SD slots on computers and tablets. When you are working online, you can save data to your SD card and move that data easily between your mobile computing devices and your computers at home or at the office.

What is a micro SD card? A standard SD card is 32 mm wide by 24 mm across. A micro SD card is 11mm wide by 15 mm across. You may wonder, what is a micro SD card used for at such a small footprint? The most common use for a micro SD card is in smartphones and other smaller mobile computing devices that allow storing data. Almost every device that accesses the Internet needs some kind of storage, and micro SD cards fill the bill well for smartphones and the smaller Internet devices that are being developed.

What are the different types of SD cards?

Secure Digital, better known by its SD acronym, includes many different types of SD cards, with different shapes and

• SD (Secure Digital) – an old type of memory card that has storage capacities up to 2 GB, formatted by default in FAT16. SD cards have a physical size of 32 × 24 × 2.1 mm. This size has become the norm for all the other, newer versions of SD cards, such as SDHC, SDXC, or SDUC. Nowadays, many people are using the term SD to refer to the newer SDHC, SDXC, or SDUC memory cards too.
• microSD are miniaturized versions of SD cards, which have a standard size of 15 × 11 × 1 mm. microSD is also an old type of memory card, with a maximum storage capacity of 2 GB. Their physical size was kept for the newer versions of microSDHC, microSDXC, and microSDUC cards. Also, people refer to these cards as microSD cards, although that is not technically correct.
• miniSD cards are smaller than regular SD cards but larger than microSD cards: 21.5 × 20 × 1.4 mm. Otherwise, they have the same storage capacity range as SD/microSD cards.
• SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards are identical to SD in terms of size, dimensions, and speed, but have a range of storage capacity between 2 GB and 32 GB. Also, SDHC cards are formatted by default in FAT 32
• microSDHC is the miniaturized version of SDHC. microSDHC cards can also store up to 32 GB of data on them.
• miniSDHC cards have the same body size as miniSD cards, but the same specs as SDHC, with a storage size of up to 32 GB.
• SDXC (Secure Digital Extended Capacity) is an improved version of SDHC. While keeping the same physical aspects as SD, SDXC cards can hold up to 2 TB of files, and also provide faster data transfer speeds. SDXC cards are formatted, by default, using the exFAT file system.
• microSDXC cards have the same physical size as microSD and microSDHC cards, but they’re faster, and their storage capacity can theoretically go up to 2 TB.
• SDUC (Secure Digital Ultra Capacity) cards retain the same physical build of SD/SDHC/SDXC cards, but their maximum storage capacity is much greater, with a theoretical maximum of 128 TB. By default, SDUC cards come formatted using exFAT

How to Fix Damaged SD Card and Recover Data from SD Card?

If the memory card is still unreadable, then know how to fix damaged SD card:

1: Connect the SD card to your computer

Connect the affected micro SD card to your computer and check whether the problem persists or not. Sometimes there are compatibility issues that may prevent the device to recognize the SD card. You can connect the SD card to your computer through a card reader. Also, you can join the corrupted SD card to another camera/ smartphone to check the issue.

2: Repair corrupt SD card using Command Prompt

• Connect the corrupted SD card to your computer
• go to “My Computer/This PC.”
• under the “Devices and drives” section, locate the SD card and note its drive letter.
• Now run Command Prompt and type “chkdsk h: /r”, where “h” is the drive’s letter.

Repair corrupted sd card using cmd (diskpart and chkdsk)

Part 1 – Repair damaged sd card, microsd card using diskpart [3 ways]

CMD command prompt diskpart is a Windows system tool which can perform a lot of operation performance. If your device becomes raw drive, then you can use CMD command prompt diskpart to repair it. You just need to convert the file system from raw to NTFS, FAT32, or other file system. But you need to know there are some risks when you use this system command operation tool.https://www.youtube.com/embed/oqsEDGL03Wg?rel=0

Attention:

You need to pay attention to the process when you use CMD command prompt, which can make your another hard drive get formatted by mistake.

This process will erase every file on your memory card, you need to recover them at first before using cmd. How? iCare Pro Free is able to help, which is listed at the third part of this article.

Parepartions:

1. Run CMD in your computer by openning Run and type ‘cmd/diskpart’ to open.
2. Open your computer and remember which drive letter your memory card has and remember it correclty since it would be used in the cmd.

Start cmd

Note: If you type ‘cmd’ or ‘CMD’ in the run box to open, next you will need to type ‘diskpart’ in the coming up window to start the journey of diskpart.

CMD Way 1 – format * /fs:fat32

Type“format F: /fs:fat32”(F is the drive letter that you need to replace with your own corrupted sd card drive letter that you need to open your computer to check which drive letter does your computer assign it with before all the steps.)

Repair damaged sd card using cmd

CMD Way 2 – List volume, select, format

1. Step 1 – list volume
2. Step 2 – select volume 4
3. Step 3 – format fs=fat32 quick
4. Step 4 – exit

This way of cmd does not require any drive letter from you that can be selected in the listed volumes

Repair corrupted sd card with cmd diskpart

CMD Way 3 – List disk, clean, create partition primary, format

1. Step 1 – diskpart
2. Step 2 – select disk 1 (you need to replace 1 with your own memory card volume number)
3. Step 3 – clean
4. Step 4 – create partition primary
5. Step 5 – format fs=ntfs quick (or you may use ‘format fs=fat32 quick’)
6. Step 6 – exit

Repair corrupted sd card with cmd diskpart

After these steps, you can convert your device file system into FAT32, you can also change the fat32 into ntfs if you want to convert your file system into NTFS.

This operation will format your disk, if you have important data on it, recover them first.

If your sd card becomes inaccessible you can try CHKDSK to check the disk.

Part 2 – Repair damaged sd card using chkdsk

Chkdsk is able to fix errors on digital devices that you may use it the following way.

Preparation: Open your computer ‘This PC’ and then see what drive letter the computer has labled your memory card.

• Firstly, start cmd
• Secondly, type chkdsk h:/f (you need to replace h with your own memory card drive letter that appears in your computer)

* /f – f stands for fixing damaged devices.