How Do I Recover Pictures from A Corrupted SD Card?

Is it possible to recover pictures from a corrupted SD card?

In short, yes, it’s possible to recover pictures from a corrupted SD card, but there are different situations when you find a SD card corrupted:

If your SD card is RAW or only has one partition missing, there is a high chance of recovering pictures from the corrupted SD card. In the third and fourth situations, it’s possible to retrieve data from the SD card after you fix the device.

However, if your SD card is not showing up at all, you can try to change the card reader and connect the SD card to another computer. If the problem is still here, you’d better send it to professionals repair.

Quick fix: How do I recover pictures from a corrupted SD card on a Windows PC?

After you’ve found pictures lost from corrupted SD card, the first thing is to recover lost pictures as soon as possible. But, any redundant operations may cause data overwriting on your device, is there a quick solution for recover lost pictures?

In this case, we highly recommend using a third-party data recovery tool to successfully recover data. AOMEI FastRecovery is an excellent choice in this regard because it handles all commonly used SD card file systems, including FAT, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS. It can execute powerful scans with support for hundreds of file formats, including image and video files. All Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7 and Windows Servers are supported, and most popular storage devices can use it to retrieve lost data files.

Step 1. Download and install AOMEI FastRecovery first, and then choose the exact partition or drive where your data are located. Here, you can connect the SD card to your PC, and then choose the respective drive.

Step 2. Scan your drive to find the desired data. It will execute the Quick Scan first to find your data fast, and then execute the Deep Scan for searching lost content comprehensively.

Step 3. After scanning, all missing files will be displayed. Kindly choose the specific files and then click Recover.

Step 4. Specify a path for the file and wait for the process to complete.

How to fix corrupted SD card in different situations

After you successfully recover lost pictures from your SD card, let’s see how to fix your corrupted SD card.

▌Case 1. SD Card shows in Disk Management but you can’t access or the partition is missing

Method 1. Check your devices

It is recommended that you check to see if your SD card is properly placed into the device. If not, detach your SD card and reconnect it properly to your smartphone or camera. Hopefully, you will be able to use your SD card normally. If you are still unable to access the SD card, you should investigate whether there is a problem with the SD card slot.

Method 2. Try CHKDSK

As CHKDSK will cause permanent data loss file fixing the device error, so make sure that you recover data from the corrupted SD card first.

Tips: You need to unplug the SD card from the electronic device, insert it into a card reader, and connect it to a working computer running Windows.

Step 1. Open the Search box, type “cmd”, locate Command Prompt, right-click it and choose “Run as administrator.”

Step 2. In Command Prompt window, type “chkdsk g: /f” and hit “Enter”.

In the command, "d" represents the drive letter of the partition on the SD card. If you don't know the drive letter allocated to the SD card partition, you can use Disk Management to find the drive based on its capacity or something else and remember the drive letter.

Method 3. Reformat corrupted SD card using CMD

Step 1. Type "cmd" in the search box. Right-click on Command Prompt and choose "Run as administrator".

Step 2. In the command prompt, type "diskpart" and press "Enter". Type "list disk" to list all the available drives on your computer and press "Enter".

Step 3. Type "select disk n" ( n refers the disk number of your SD card) to select the SD card you want to format and press “Enter”.

Step 4. Type "clean" to clean the SD card you have selected and press "Enter".

Step 5. Type "create partition primary" to create a partition on the cleaned SD card and press "Enter":

Step 6. Type "format fs=ntfs" (or format fs=exfat) and press "Enter" to format the drive with NTFS or exFAT.

▌Case 2. Corrupted SD card shows as No Media

When a SD card or USB drive displays "No Media" in Disk Management, it indicates that the computer is unable to interface with the drive normally. It is an empty drive on the computer, and you lose all access to the data stored on the device. You can check 7 solutions for this issue in: No Media Fix in Windows 7, 8, 10, 11.

▌Case 3. SD card shows in File Explorer but not in Disk Management

If you can see your SD card in File Explorer but not in Disk Management, this may be caused by an outdated driver.

Step 1. Open the Start menu and search for Device Manager.

Step 2. Expand the Disk Drives option.

Step 3. Right-click your SD card. If it is not recognized by your PC, it will have a yellow exclamation mark and choose “Update drivers”.

Step 4. Select “Search automatically for drivers”. And then restart your PC.

Tip: Check more solutions to fix SD card not in Disk Management.

Ending lines

The possibility of doing a corrupted SD card recovery is dependent on the state of your SD card. If it's physically damaged, you should send it for repair. If not, data recovery software such as AOMEI FastRecovery can easily recover data from a corrupted SD card. In addition to how to restore images, solutions for a corrupted memory card are presented. Hope these can be useful to you.