6 Solutions: SD Card Is Blank or Has Unsupported File System

Notification: Blank SD Card. SD Card Is Blank or Has Unsupported File System

SD cards are widely used in various electronic devices, such as Android phones, cameras, handheld game consoles, etc. Users use them to transfer files, save photos, increase Android’s internal storage space, create Windows boot media, and more.

However, while using the SD card, you may encounter various SD card errors, such as the SD card cannot be read, the SD card is not full but says full, the SD card cannot be mounted, etc.

Today, we’re going to talk about how to fix another SD card problem:

“Blank SD card. SD card is blank or has unsupported file system.”

Why SD Card Is Blank or Has Unsupported File System

Generally speaking, a mobile phone memory card can become blank or has an unsupported file system due to many reasons: virus infection, violent removal of the SD card, logical corruption, RAW file system, and more.

Why does the SD card show blank? Please take into account the following factors:

• Did you remove the SD card without turning off your cell phone?
• Did you use the SD card into an untrusted computer?
• Did you remove the SD card from your PC or laptop without clicking “Safely remove hardware”?

If so, that’s perhaps why you get the blank SD card error. Now, you can attempt the following approaches to get the blank SD card fixed.

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6 Solutions to Remove the Blank SD Card Error

Solution 1: Try Rebooting the Phone

Similar to restarting your computer can solve many temporary Windows problems, you can try restarting your phone first of all. If the blank SD card is also caused by a temporary error, the problem may be solved with a simple reboot.

Step 1: Turn off the phone by holding the Power button or the Power + Volume Down buttons for a few seconds.

Step 2: Reboot the phone to see if the SD card works again.

Solution 2: Repeatedly Insert and Unplug the SD Card

If restarting the phone does not solve the problem, you can try to remove and insert the problematic SD card several times until your phone successfully reads the SD card.

Solution 3: Insert the SD Card to Another Device

To rule out the problem of the mobile phone device or the card slot, it is recommended that you remove the SD card and insert it into another mobile phone or computer to check whether the SD card is normal.

Solution 4: Run CHKDSK to Fix File System Errors

CHKDSK command is used to scan your drives for file system errors. So, if you receive the message saying the SD card has unsupported file system, you can run CHKDSK to diagnose and fix file system issues on the card.

Step 1: Remove the blank SD card from your phone and then connect the card to your PC via a card reader. Make sure the SD card is detected by the computer.

Step 2: Run Command Prompt as administrator, then input chkdsk n: /f and press Enter (n represents the drive letter of the blank SD card).

Step 3: Wait for the diagnostic and repair process to complete. Then insert the SD card back into your phone and check whether the card works fine.

See Also: Solutions to CHKDSK Not Working in Different Cases.

Solution 5: Show and Delete Hidden Files on the SD Card

If you have ever inserted the SD card into another device, there’s a possibility that hidden files were left behind on the memory card, and these files may be the culprit of the blank SD card. In this case, you need to follow the steps below to make hidden files visible and then delete them.

Step 1: Connect the blank SD card to your computer via a card reader.

Step 2: In File Explorer, move on to the View tab and tick the Hidden items option.

Step 3: Go to the This PC section in the left panel, then open the target SD card to check whether there are some suspicious files. If yes, select and right-click on them to click Delete.

Solution 6: Format the SD Card

If all the solutions above failed for you to repair this blank SD card and view SD card files, then unfortunately, you may need to format the memory card. However, as we all know, formatting will cause all SD card data to be removed, which means you will get a truly blank SD card.

To prevent the photos, videos, documents, etc. in the SD card from being permanently deleted, before formatting this SD card that has a file system problem, you need to use professional data recovery software to transfer the files on the card.

Here, free data recovery software, MiniTool Power Data Recovery, is of great help.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery specializes in recovering SD card files in various situations where SD card files are lost or inaccessible. Some of the most common situations are that the SD card becomes RAW, the SD card photos are not showing up, the SD card is corrupted, the SD card has bad sectors, etc.

More importantly, aside from its proficiency in SD card recovery, MiniTool Power Data Recovery is also very effective for SSD file recovery, HDD data recovery, external hard drive recovery, USB drive restoration, etc., and it works perfect on Windows 11/10/8/7.

Next, we will walk you through how to recover blank SD card with MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

Before you do:

• Click the button below to download this data recovery software and install it on your Windows computer.
• Connect the blank SD card to the computer.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery. On its home window, select the SD card partition and click the Scan button. If the SD card is not detected, click the Refresh button to reload the drive list.

The scan duration depends on how many files are in this SD card. This SD card data recovery software provides options to pause and terminate the scan, but it is not recommended that you stop the scan midway as doing so will result in incomplete scan results.

Step 2: After scanning, you can unfold each folder from the tree structure under Path to find the files you need. Also, if you want to locate the desired files more quickly, you can take advantage of the Type, Filter, and Search features.

By moving on to the Type category list, you can customize which file types to view. For example, if you want to view all videos captured, you can focus on the Audio & Video section.

The Filter feature lets you filter out unwanted files by file type, file size, file modification date, and file category. The Search feature helps you locate a certain file/folder by searching for its name. Partial or complete names are supported, as long as they are consecutive and correct characters.

To ensure that the recovered files are needed and openable, you are supposed to preview them. Supported types of files to preview include PNG, JPG, JPEG, DOC, DOCX, MKV, WEBM, MTS, FLV, 3GP, MP4, and more.

Step 3: Select all the files you want to recover by checking the checkboxes next to them and click Save to choose a safe location to store them.

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After rescuing the data, it’s time to format the blank SD card.

You can format the SD card to a FAT32 file system with the help of Windows Explorer.

Step 1: Connect the blank SD card to the computer via a card reader.

Step 2: In File Explorer, go to This PC, then find and right-click the SD card to select the Format option.

Step 3: Select the FAT32 file system, specify a volume label, and then click the Start button.

It is easy to format the SD card from File Explorer. However, some users reported that they could not format the drive due to the “Windows was unable to complete the format” error message.

If you receive this error message or cannot format the SD card due to some other reason, you can use a professional and green partition manager to do the format job. Here we take MiniTool Partition Wizard Free for example.

Download, install, and run MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: On the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard Free, select the SD card partition and drop down the left menu to click the Format Partition feature.

Step 2: In the pop-up window, set up the file system to FAT32 and input a partition label. Then, press OK. 

Step 3: Finally, press the Apply button located in the lower left corner to execute all changes.

After formatting, the SD card should have been restored to its original state and can be used normally.

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Summary

In a nutshell, in this post, we explored the problem of Android phone prompting that the SD card is blank or has unsupported file system and provided possible causes and solutions.

Please try each of the methods mentioned above sequentially until the issue is resolved.

If you encounter any problems during using MiniTool software, please contact us immediately via [email protected]. Please be sure to describe more details about your issue so that we can accurately assess the problem and help you out.