SD card write-protection unwanted

jimlau · 29 Jun 2020

I have a micro SD card which suddenly says it is write-protected. I made sure the small tab on the side was in the proper position. I also tried the disk part method but it had no effect on the read only status.
I see there's another possible solution by editing the registry, but I'm worried that that would apply to all drives. Any suggestions? I don't want to erase all the files on the drive.
And I tried 2 different adapters, which work on another SD card.
Thanks.

Brink · 29 Jun 2020

Hello Jim,

You could check the options in the tutorial below to see if one may apply.

Enable or Disable Disk Write Protection in Windows

Try3 · 29 Jun 2020

It sounds to me that the card has become permanently defective [worn out]. Behaving as read-only is the most commonly-reported symptom of a defective SD/USB card and it can strike at any age.

Denis

Bastet · 30 Jun 2020

It’s most likely failed.
You can try copying all the information off the drive & running diskpart to clean the card then formatting it to see if it’ll ‘fix’ the read only message, if not or at any point it fails then the drive is kaput.
Start>Powershell with admin & enter:
diskpart
list disk
select disc X (where X is the number of the SD card)
Clean
exit

Now go to drive management & it should ask you to initialise the drive, agree then you can format it.

Damun · 30 Jun 2020

Just a suggestion to make sure before you write it off:
I have a SD card where the write protection tab is "loose" so that every time i insert it into a reader it moves to the "protect" position and when i pull it out, the tab moves back to the "write" position.
I ended up taping it in the write position with a small piece of tape.

Edit:
Nevermind. I just realized you're asking about a micro SD.... My bad.

EdTittel · 30 Jun 2020

The maker's site may have a low-level format utility. If that doesn't do the job, then the other posters who've suggested that the device is no longer working are probably correct. I've had this happen to me on USB flash drives, plus full-size and micro SD cards. Best of luck in resolving your situation. Look at the bright side: at least you can still copy the existing contents to other media, before you toss this microSD card out.
HTH,
--Ed--

Farvatten · 30 Jun 2020

EdTittel said:

The maker's site may have a low-level format utility.

If you can't find one at the makers site there's also this one that the SD Association recommends and that @Bree mentioned here:

Writing to SD Cards

SD Memory Card Formatter - SD Association