CHKDSK SD Card
What Is CHKDSK?
CHKDSK is a Windows built-in tool to help you check a volume or partition’s file system and file system metadata for logical and physical errors. You can run CHKDSK on your computer’s internal hard drive. You can also run it on a removable drive like an external hard drive, SD card, USB flash drive, memory card, SSD, etc.
CHKDSK can run individually. If you run it without parameters, CHKDSK will display only the status of the volume or partition and not fix any errors. However, if you want to fix a corrupted SD card using CHKDSK, you need to run it with special parameters like /f, /r, /x, or /b.
These are the commonly used parameters used to find and fix errors on a drive.
| Parameter | Description |
| /f | This parameter can fix the found errors on the disk/volume/partition. The target drive must be locked. If chkdsk cannot lock the drive, a message will appear to remind you if you want to check the drive the next time you restart the PC. |
| /r | This parameter can find and locate bad sectors, and recover readable information. The target drive must be locked. /r includes the functionality of /f, with the additional analysis of physical disk errors on the selected drive. |
| /x | This parameter focuses the volume to dismount first, if necessary. All open handles to the drive are invalidated. /x also includes the functionality of /f. |
| /b | You can use it with NTFS only. This parameter can clear the list of bad clusters on the drive and rescans all allocated and free clusters for errors. /b includes the functionality of /r. You can use this parameter after imaging a volume to a new hard disk drive. |
How to CHKDSK SD Card?
As mentioned above, you can use CHKDSK to check and fix errors on a failed SD card. However, if there are important files on the failed SD card, you’d better use professional data recovery software to recover data from it before you fix the card. This can make you fix a corrupt SD card without data loss.
The following conditions can make you think the SD card is corrupt or damaged:
- SD card shows empty but there are files on it.
- SD card is full but no files on it.
- SD card shows half capacity.
- Files are missing for no reason.
- SD card runs slowly.
- SD card is inaccessible.
- SD card becomes RAW.
- You receive an error message saying: You need to format the SD card before you can use it.
- The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
- SD card is not showing up in File Explorer.
- SD card is not recognized by your PC.
Move 1: Recover Data from the Failed SD Card
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a data restore tool designed and developed by MiniTool Software. You can use this utility to recover files from an SD card, hard disk drive, SSD, memory card, USB flash drive, and more.
This software can work in various situations:
- When your files are deleted or lost, you can use this software to recover them as long as they are not overwritten by new data.
- You can also use this MiniTool data recovery software to recover data from a drive that has been formatted.
- If your data storage drive becomes inaccessible suddenly, you can try this tool to scan the drive and see if it can find and recover files on it.
- More importantly, you can use this software to recover data from a computer that won’t boot.
This software can fully meet your need to recover data from a corrupt or damaged SD card.
If you use this software for the first time, you can try the free edition. You can use the free edition to scan the SD card and see if it can find the files you want to recover. You can even recover up to 1 GB of files using this freeware.
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You can use these steps to recover data from a corrupted SD card.
Step 1: Download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free on your device.
Step 2: Insert the SD card into a card reader if necessary and connect the reader to your PC.
Step 3: Open the software to enter its main interface.
Step 4: If this software can detect the SD card, you can see it on the software interface. Hove over to that SD card and click the Scan button to start scanning it.
Step 5: After scanning, you can see the scan results that are categorized by the path. You can open each path to find the files you need to recover. If there are so many files and it is difficult to find them quickly, you can switch to the Type tab to make this software show the scanned file by type. Besides, you can also use the Filter, Preview, and Search features to find your needed files effectively. Please try them when necessary.
Step 6: Select the files you want to restore, then click the Save button to continue.
Step 7: Select a suitable location to save your selected files. The destination drive should not be the original SD card. If the SD card is damaged, it will be an invalid path. On the other hand, any data written on the card later could overwrite the missing files in the drive. All in all, the original location of the lost and deleted files is not the proper destination in any case.
Step 8: When the data recovery completes, you can see the following interface. You can click the View Recovered button to directly access the destination folder and use the recovered files.
Of course, you can also use this software to perform SD card data recovery in other situations. For example, some files on it are deleted unexpectedly, you can use this software to recover filles. If the card is formatted by mistake, you can use this software to rescue your files. In short, when you want to recover data from your SD card, you can just try this file recovery tool.
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If you want to use this software to recover more files, you need to upgrade to a full edition. MiniTool Software supplies different editions for personal users and business users. You can go to MiniTool’s official store to select a suitable edition according to your situation. If you are a personal user, the Personal Ultimate edition can fully meet your data recovery needs.
Move 2: Fix SD Card Using CHKDKS
Now, your data on the failed/corrupted/damaged SD card is safe now. You can feel free to fix the card using CHKDSK.
You need to run CHKDSK in Command Prompt. Here is a guide:
Step 1: Make sure the SD card is connected to your PC.
Step 2: Click the search icon or box, then type CMD into search.
Step 3: Command Prompt should be the best match. You need to right-click it and select Run as administrator.
Step 4: Type “chkdsk /f /x *:” into Command Prompt and press Enter. In this step, you need to replace * with the drive letter of the SD card. Of course, you can run “chkdsk /f /r *:” or “chkdsk /f *:”or another parameter(s) combines to fix errors on an SD card.
Then, this tool will start running to check and fix the file system of the SD card. The whole process will last for some minutes. You need to wait patiently until the whole process ends.
Here is how to run CHKDSK to find and fix errors on an SD card.Click to Tweet
Other Ways to Fix a Failed SD Card
CHKDSK is not the only way to fix a failed SD card. In some cases, CHKDSK cannot help you fix the faulty SD card. For example, when you run CHKDSK to fix a RAW SD card, you only receive an error message saying: CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.
If the CHKDSK SD card operation is not the way you desire, you can try other ways to fix the card.
Way 1: Assign a Drive Letter for the SD Card
If the SD card has no drive letter, it will not show up in File Explorer. But you can find it in Disk Management. Thus, you can add a drive letter for the SD card in Disk Management.
Step 1: Open Disk Management. You can type create and format hard disk partitions into the search box on the taskbar and select the best match to open it.
Step 2: Right-click the SD card and select Change Drive Letter and Paths….
Step 3: Click Add, then assign a drive letter for the SD card.
Step 4: Click OK to save the change.
A new drive letter is added successfully. Now, you can go to File Explorer to check if you can see the SD card and use it as normal.
Way 2: Use Another USB Port
If your computer has more than one USB port, you can also try another USB port and see if the SD card can be recognized successfully. If yes, it means the first USB port is damaged and your SD card is fine.
Way 2: Reinstall or Update the SD Card Driver
If the SD card driver is corrupt or outdated, the SD card could malfunction. To rule out this possibility, you can reinstall or update the SD card driver to have a shot:
Step 1: Press Windows + X to open the WinX menu, then select Device Manager from the menu.
Step 2: Expand Portable Devices, then right-click the SD card and select Update driver or Uninstall device.
- If you select Update driver, you need to follow the on-screen guides to install the latest SD card driver to your PC.
- If you select Uninstall device, you need to click the Uninstall button again to confirm the uninstallation, then restart your computer to let Windows automatically install the latest version of the driver.
Step 3 Repeat the above step to USB Mass Storage Device under Universal Serial Bus controllers.
Step 4: Restart your computer.
Way 3: Format the SD Card to Normal
The last choice is to format the SD card to normal. This method is very useful, but it will delete all files on the card. So, it is important to use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to rescue your files from the drive before you format it.
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You can directly format an SD card in File Explorer:
Step 1: Press Windows + E to access File Explorer.
Step 2: Click This PC from the left menu to view the visible drives.
Step 3: Right-click the SD card and select Format from the context menu.
Step 4: Select file system for the SD card. You can also type a label for the card. If you want to perform a deep scan, you need to deselect Quick Format.
Step 5: Click Start to start formatting the SD card.
You can also format an SD card in Disk Management or using MiniTool Partition Wizard. You can find these ways in this post: How do I format an SD card quickly.
You can click this button to get the free edition of MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free partition manager.
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Bottom Line
Now, you know the useful information about CHKDSK SD card. Before you fix the SD card, you’d better use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to rescue your files to keep them safe.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
When your SD card doesn’t work normally, you can run CHKDSK to check and fix errors or block bad sectors on it. If this tool cannot help you out, you can use other ways introduced in this post to fix your SD card.
Should you encounter issues when using MiniTool software, you can contact us via [email protected].
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 7 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.