How repair mini SC card with Read/Write error

I have a mini SD card in my Galaxy S9+. I constantly get a message which reads that there is a Read/Write error. So far, I haven't had a problem saving all my new photos but sooner or later, the card will die (128 GB card). I have all my photos on the card so I copied them to my PC. So far, so good - nothing lost. I Googled how to fix the error and it was suggested that I run chkdsk or reformat the drive or use the Diskpart command. First, chkdsk tells me the volume ID and tells me it's formatted as exFAT. The, it just sits there. (The command I used was "chkdsk h: /f". The mini SD card is in a USB adapter plugged into my computer. The mini card is recognized.

Next, I tried the Diskpart command but couldn't understand how to use the results.

I haven't yet tried the reformat solution yet because I know nothing about the exFAT format.

PS: Somewhere I read that there is a lock button on the mini SD card - but I couldn't find one.

Could someone help me out with this issue? A 128 GB card isn't cheap! I'd like to salvage this one. Thank you.......

Nisko,

Where is that you are getting the error messages? Is it on the phone or when connected to your computer?

If you want to reformat the card on your computer, follow the instructions below, otherwise, note that you can also format the card from the phone which may actually be a better idea as I'm not sure if the phone might want to do anything special with the card when it is first setup in the phone.

That said, you can format from your computer like this:

You could simply format the card from File Explorer, but I suspect that the suggestion to do so from diskpart is because they probably want you to completely wipe the cards partition information first.

1) Open a command prompt on your computer.
2) Type "diskpart" and hit ENTER. This will open the diskpart utility. Another windows should open with a DISKPART> prompt.
3) Run the command "list disk". Below is an example of what I see:



In the above screenshot I know that Disk 5 is my SD card because of the size. It is a 128GB SD card (there's actually a bit less space after formatting, but it's clear that disk 5 is the correct disk). If you are not sure then select the disk by running the command "select disk 5", then "detail disk" (replace the "5" with whatever disk number you want detail for. Here's an example:





Notice that there are several clues that I have selected the correct disk. It shows up as an SDXC Card, it's a removable disk connected via USB adapter in my case, the size is right, and I had a volume label of "SD Card" on this disk, so I know that disk 5 is the correct disk. If the disk you selected is not the correct one, you can run "list disk again", "select disk x", and "detail disk" to view the details for another disk.

DON'T RUN THE FOLLOWING COMMANDS UNTIL YOU HAVE THE CORRECT DISK SELECTED! The following commands will delete all data from the selected disk.

4) Run the following commands:

clean
create partition primary
format fs=exfat quick
assign
exit

This will drop you back to the command prompt. You can close that window or issue another "exit" command. Another screenshot to illustrate:



Your SD Card now has a fresh format on it.

Have you set the phone to backup photos to Google photos that way you never loose any as it does it as soons as you take one and have interent

Thank you. I'm copying my photos from my computer back to the SD card and it paused at 88%. Think I'm in trouble. No error message - just PAUSED 88%. What now, please?

hsehestedt said:

Nisko,

Where is that you are getting the error messages? Is it on the phone or when connected to your computer?

If you want to reformat the card on your computer, follow the instructions below, otherwise, note that you can also format the card from the phone which may actually be a better idea as I'm not sure if the phone might want to do anything special with the card when it is first setup in the phone.

That said, you can format from your computer like this:

You could simply format the card from File Explorer, but I suspect that the suggestion to do so from diskpart is because they probably want you to completely wipe the cards partition information first.

1) Open a command prompt on your computer.
2) Type "diskpart" and hit ENTER. This will open the diskpart utility. Another windows should open with a DISKPART> prompt.
3) Run the command "list disk". Below is an example of what I see:



In the above screenshot I know that Disk 5 is my SD card because of the size. It is a 128GB SD card (there's actually a bit less space after formatting, but it's clear that disk 5 is the correct disk). If you are not sure then select the disk by running the command "select disk 5", then "detail disk" (replace the "5" with whatever disk number you want detail for. Here's an example:





Notice that there are several clues that I have selected the correct disk. It shows up as an SDXC Card, it's a removable disk connected via USB adapter in my case, the size is right, and I had a volume label of "SD Card" on this disk, so I know that disk 5 is the correct disk. If the disk you selected is not the correct one, you can run "list disk again", "select disk x", and "detail disk" to view the details for another disk.

DON'T RUN THE FOLLOWING COMMANDS UNTIL YOU HAVE THE CORRECT DISK SELECTED! The following commands will delete all data from the selected disk.

4) Run the following commands:

clean
create partition primary
format fs=exfat quick
assign
exit

This will drop you back to the command prompt. You can close that window or issue another "exit" command. Another screenshot to illustrate:



Your SD Card now has a fresh format on it.

Nisko,

I'm not sure what else to say. If an operation as simple as copying files to the SD card is failing there is not too terribly much more we can do. You look at the Windows event logs to see if any errors are getting logged there at the time where the copy files.

You could also abort the copy and start it again - Windows should see the fact that 88% of the files have already been copied and ask if you want to overwrite those files. You can tell it not to overwrite them and then only the remaining 12% of the files will actually get copied.

However, at this point I would be a bit cautious with that particular SD card.

One other suggestion: You want to make sure that the problem is really the SD card and not your computer hardware or some sort of software issue. If you have another computer available, test the card there to see if it has reliability issues there as well. Also, was the card giving you problems in the phone as well, or only on your computer.

Finally, check the warranty - some SD cards have long warranties. I had one fail on me about 4 months ago and it had a 10 year warranty. I got a free replacement.

A flaky SD card is like a flaky hard disk. You should replace either one if they start to get read/write errors.

I know the SD card is expensive, Nisko, but replacing it might be the better thing to do rather than trust it with your pictures. In any case, keep a backup somewhere.

And like hsehestedt said, check out the warranty on the SD card. You may be able to get a free replacement.

Hi there
the best way to fix this once you've got as much data off the card as you can is to buy a new one -- they aren't that expensive any more and usually come with an adapter so they can be read via a standard size sd reader on the computer.

These cards aren't as robust as ssd's or even usb thumbdrives == and have a much smaller duty cycle so while reads are ok --e.g things like storing music on them they don't survive long continuous write operations for too long. That's why its not recommended to use these things for storing OS's / storing system image backups etc on --- Linux for example can boot and run from these if the computer can boot from an SD reader but not recommended. I certainly wouldn't even think about a windows to go system on one of these cards --again assuming your machine can boot from a card reader -- they are as slow as molasses for I/O operations anyway.

I have used one of these cards in an old GEN 8 proliant microserver to boot a Linux OS as the /boot partition is not needed as it just commands after loading the small bootloader bootstrap to start loading the actual OS from an SSD and the OS then runs from the SSD -- these microservers have a bootable internal micro sd card facility -- in non RAID mode i.e AHCI mode (hardware) the SSD isn't directly bootable so I got round the problem that way -- the hardware RAID on this machine is very poor so I disabled it. !! As the machine is booted very seldom there's almost no activity on the SD card. The SSD is situated on the DVD port so that leaves the 4 port HDD slots free for 4 data HDD's without needing any of those for the OS.

Cheers
jimbo

Thank you very much - worked like a charm. Sorry it took so long to thank you.

hsehestedt said:

Nisko,

Where is that you are getting the error messages? Is it on the phone or when connected to your computer?

If you want to reformat the card on your computer, follow the instructions below, otherwise, note that you can also format the card from the phone which may actually be a better idea as I'm not sure if the phone might want to do anything special with the card when it is first setup in the phone.

That said, you can format from your computer like this:

You could simply format the card from File Explorer, but I suspect that the suggestion to do so from diskpart is because they probably want you to completely wipe the cards partition information first.

1) Open a command prompt on your computer.
2) Type "diskpart" and hit ENTER. This will open the diskpart utility. Another windows should open with a DISKPART> prompt.
3) Run the command "list disk". Below is an example of what I see:



In the above screenshot I know that Disk 5 is my SD card because of the size. It is a 128GB SD card (there's actually a bit less space after formatting, but it's clear that disk 5 is the correct disk). If you are not sure then select the disk by running the command "select disk 5", then "detail disk" (replace the "5" with whatever disk number you want detail for. Here's an example:





Notice that there are several clues that I have selected the correct disk. It shows up as an SDXC Card, it's a removable disk connected via USB adapter in my case, the size is right, and I had a volume label of "SD Card" on this disk, so I know that disk 5 is the correct disk. If the disk you selected is not the correct one, you can run "list disk again", "select disk x", and "detail disk" to view the details for another disk.

DON'T RUN THE FOLLOWING COMMANDS UNTIL YOU HAVE THE CORRECT DISK SELECTED! The following commands will delete all data from the selected disk.

4) Run the following commands:

clean
create partition primary
format fs=exfat quick
assign
exit

This will drop you back to the command prompt. You can close that window or issue another "exit" command. Another screenshot to illustrate:



Your SD Card now has a fresh format on it.

No worries! Just glad it helped and thanks for the feedback.