How to Fix SD Card Not Accessible? Here Are 5 Quick Ways!

SD cards have unparalleled advantages over portable devices because of their tiny size and large capability. So it’s easy to see SD cards in smartphones, computers, digital cameras, etc.

However, sometimes when you connect your SD card to your computer, you may find that you cannot access it. You may receive an error message like the one shown, or another error message . How to fix the issue of SD card is full or not accessible? Please scroll down to get 5 feasible solutions.

"Why does my SD card say not accessible?"

Are you experiencing the same problem as the above users where you cannot access SD card in Windows 10/11? Let’s get an overview of possible reasons for SD card not accessible before beginning the SD card recovery.

• Bad sectors on the SD card.
• Corrupted file systems.
• Manufacturing defects.
• Interruption during the reading/transferring data process.
• Incorrect insertion/ejection procedure.  

[Before fix] How to recover data from an inaccessible SD cards?

Since SD card is used to store important files, when you find that you cannot access your SD card, you should first recover files from the inaccessible SD card. And you may suffer data loss during the repair process, so it is crucial to recover data from SD card. A professional data recovery tool like MyRecover can help you.

★Key Features:

Recover the deleted/lost Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, photos, videos, audio, folders, and other 1000+ types of data from HDD, USB, SD cards, and other storage devices.

Locate files quickly: Search, filter specific files/folders, and preview them to ensure that you have selected the right files for recovery.

During Quick Scan and Deep Scan, enter filenames in the search bar to locate your desired files or wait to find all the deleted and other lost files on your computers.

Support NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, and ReFS file systems in Windows 7/8/10/11 & Windows Server.

🔥 Bonus: MyRecover is free for up to 500MB of data. Download it on your Windows PC to recover files from an inaccessible SD card easily!

Step 1. Connect your SD card to the computer, after running this tool, hover the mouse over your SD card and click Scan.

Step 2. Search or wait to see all the deleted files and other missing files as you need.

Step 3. Go to the Deleted Files/Other Missing Files folder, and select the files you want. Then click “Recover x files” and save them in a new location.

5 solutions to fix SD card not accessible on Windows 10/11!

You can go to the targeted solution as long as you can ensure the precise reason. If you cannot, you can try one by one.

Fix 1. Clear cached data to fix SD card is full or not accessible

If you’re going to take new pictures via iOS devices, your iPhone saying SD card is full or not accessible. At the moment, you can clear cached data to release the storage.

Go to Settings > Storage & memory. Then you can see your iPhone’s memory usage. Select Cache or Cached data to clear.

Fix 2. Assign a drive letter to access SD card Windows 10/11

If you cannot access SD card Windows 10 because of a lack of a drive letter, you need to assign a new drive letter to the unlettered external hard drive using Disk Management.

Step 1. After connecting the SD card to your Windows computer, press “Win + R” and type “diskmgmt.msc” in the window. Then hit “Enter” or click “OK” to open the Disk Management utility.

Step 2. Locate your SD card and right-click on it, then select the “Change Drive Letter and Paths” option.

Step 3. Select “Add” to assign a new drive letter to the connected SD card.

Step 4. Select the “Assign the following drive letter” option. Please ensure the chosen drive letter is different from all the existing drive letters.

Fix 3. Type CHKDSK to perform SD card recovery

My SD card not accessible, how to fix it? Designed to fix bad sectors and errors, Chkdsk is good at performing corrupted hard drive recovery. Let’s show how it works.

Step 1. Enter “cmd” in the search bar and select “Run as administrator” to open the command prompt window.

Step 2. Enter “chkdsk” and “chkdsk d: /f” respectively in the window.

After the process, you can restart your computer to see if you can access the SD card or not.

Fix 4. Use Windows Repair Tool to perform SD card recovery

You can also use Disk Check to check drives and fix errors to recover deleted files from SD card.

Step 1. Connect the SD card to your PC, and press “Win + E” to open Windows File Explorer. Then right-click on your connected SD card.

Step 2. Click Properties and select Tools under the Properties tab. Then click the “Check” button.

Step 3. Click the “Scan Drive” button to start the process.

Fix 5. Format SD card to a compatible file system

If you can’t access SD card Windows 10/11 because of the file system of your SD card is not compatible with the Windows OS, you can format it to another file system which can be recognized by Windows OS.

In this scenario, you’re recommended to use free AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to fix this issue with ease.   

You’ll lose all the data saved on your SD card after the formatting process. If you are unwilling to suffer data loss, it’s possible for you to retrieve data from your SD card via the following data recovery software.  

Step 1. Connect the SD card to your Windows PC, then download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard on this PC.

Step 2. Locate your SD card and right-click on it, then click the “Format partition” button.

Step 3. Choose the proper file system and click the “OK” button.

Step 4. Click “Apply” in the main interface. Then please wait patiently.

In conclusion

How to fix SD card not accessible? How to recover deleted files from SD cards? Please read the corresponding part to find feasible solutions.

More importantly, it’s time for you to make regular backups using free backup software for Windows, AOMEI Backupper because only regular backups are the best data loss prevention measure.