Hello everybody!
In today’s video, I’m going to tell you what to do if your phone can’t see a memory
card.
These days, all phones and almost every other gadget have a special slot for a memory card.
One day or another, everyone may face the situation when a phone can’t recognize a
memory card, or it displays a message saying the card is out of order, damaged or not supported,
to say nothing about other possible issues.
From today’s video, you will learn why such things happen and how they can be fixed in
an Android device.
So, let’s begin.
The first thing to check is the contacts of your memory card.
There are cases when those contacts get corroded or covered with dust, and it makes the contact
too poor for the phone to recognize the card.
Start with taking the card out of its slot and then try inserting it back again.
If it doesn’t help, clean the card contacts.
Use a pencil eraser to rub the contacts - very carefully.
If you can access the contacts in your phone’s memory card slot - clean them too.
If nothing changes, the cause behind your problem must be more serious, for example,
contacts inside the phone are damaged, or the memory card is out of order.
To exclude one of these, try using another card with this phone - if it’s the contacts
inside the phone, it will not see any card at all, no matter which one you use.
If it’s the card to blame - no matter what device you put the card into, the faulty card
will NEVER be recognized.
Another possible cause is using a memory card which is NOT supported.
For each gadget, there is a limitation for capacity of memory cards it can handle.
If you see such an error, you phone might be unable to work with cards of larger capacity.
So every time that a phone or tablet PC fails to recognize a memory card, check the specifications
and make sure that your gadget supports the capacity and type of the memory card you are
trying to use with it.
One more thing to get in the way could be a bad block.
To find out if this assumption is true, insert the card into a card reader.
If the card is recognized, go on to repair it.
Open “This PC” and select the memory card.
Right-click on it and select “Properties.”
In the window that opens, find the tab “Tools” and select checking the disk for errors.
When the check is over, take the memory card out of the card reader and put it back into
your phone to see if it can be recognized now.
If this method doesn’t help, the last option is to format the card.
If the card reader DOES recognize it, save all important files to your computer, because
- as you may know - formatting will destroy all data.
Another widespread situation when your gadget cannot recognize a memory card looks like
this.
When you insert the card, the phone shows you the message that the SD card doesn’t
work, is damaged, or not supported.
You can see a few examples on the screen.
When you tap on the message, the phone will suggest formatting the card and configuring
it as portable media or internal memory.
However, if you see a message like that it doesn’t actually mean the card is damaged
- especially when you know it worked FINE just a day before with your laptop or desktop
computer.
In such a situation, the actual cause behind the alarming message is either the card having
a file system which is not supported by Android (for example, NTFS), or the card without any
file system - which can happen after certain operations with the memory card on a computer.
Well, there are a few methods to solve the problem:
Method one.
If there is any important data on the memory card, transfer it to the computer using a
card reader, and then use the computer to format the card into FAT32 or ExFAT.
Otherwise, insert the card into the phone and format it as a portable media or internal
memory by tapping on the message about unsupported or damaged SD card.
Alternatively, you can do it by opening Settings - Storage - SD card.
Menu - Format.
Method two.
If you don’t have any important data on the card, just tap on the message saying that
the SD card doesn’t work properly, or open Settings - Storage, and in the SD card section
tap on the card marked as damaged, tap to configure and select how you want to format
the memory card.
If the phone or tablet PC can’t format the memory card, try doing it with your computer.
Connect the card to the computer with the help of a card reader, open This PC, right-click
on the disk - Format - FAT32.
Also, the message about a card being damaged or unsupported may appear if such card was
used as internal memory on another device or the current device which was then reset
to default settings.
Finally, the last option is formatting, but it means losing all data…so remember about
it.
In our channel, there is a good video about restoring data from a memory card – just
check the link below.
Other possible issues and how to fix them If none of the methods in this video helps
you, and your Android device still can’t see the memory card, try the following:
If the card is not displayed in the File Explorer when connected to the computer, but it is
shown in Disk Management, find your memory card there, right-click on one of the partitions
and choose “Delete Volume”.
Then right-click on it and select “New Simple Volume”, then connect the card to an Android
device.
If you failed to format the card with your phone or computer, try using a specialized
utility SD Card Formatter (designed as a desktop tool): it can detect and format a memory card
even when it’s not displayed in the File Explorer at all.
By way of good-bye, here’s one more thing to keep in mind: there are fake memory cards
(some people tend to buy them dirt-cheap from Chinese online stores) and these are advertised
to have a certain capacity which is displayed properly on a computer, though the actual
capacity is less than expected (the simple trick is based on the cards using special
firmware), but when you stick such a card into an Android phone, it’s merely a question
of luck: it may or may not work properly.
That is all for now!
Hopefully, this video was useful.
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Thank you for watching.
Good luck.