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15 July 2019  Ashley S. Miller  Specialist of Customer Service Dept.
 

Summary
Sometimes, an SD card is not showing up on an Android phone. Why? How to fix a corrupted SD card?



Part 1: Why and How If Android SD Card is not Showing up

Poor Connection with SD Card

Sometimes, a SD card is not showing up on Android phone because of poor connection. The misplaced contacts or the dirt on the contacts or the slot can make a SD card not show up on a mobile phone.

At this moment, you can slightly clean the SD contacts.

Step 1: Remove SD card from mobile phone

First, power off the mobile phone and take the SD card out. If you are not clear about how to remove it, please refer to the product instruction.

remove sd card from android mobile when it is not showing up
Step 2: Clean SD card

Use an eraser to clean the SD card contacts until they are clean. Then, insert it into the phone.

how to fix a damaged sd card without formatting it

Error on SD Card File System

As the SD card is not showing up in Android or iPhone, we should consider whether the file system can run in the phone or not. The file systems are not definitely available in different mobile phones.

Where file systems can be used

File system

Limited to size

Windows

iOS

Android

FAT324GB○○○
exFATNo○○○
NTFSNo○××
From the table, we can see that NTFS can be used in neither an iOS phone nor an Android phone. Although FAT32 has high compatibility, it cannot support a file over 4GB. It seems outdated as the emergence of high-capacity devices. Therefore, exFAT is better than FAT32 for a 64GB mobile phone if permitted. When a SD card is not showing up in Android phone, it may indicate that the file system cannot run in the mobile operating system and you should try to format the card to another file system.
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Android users can format the SD on mobile phones, ensuring that the file system adapts to the mobile operating system.

1. Insert the SD card to your Android phone and then go to [Settings].

2. Find out and tap [Storage] > [SD card] > [Format SD card]. Then select a file system to format the SD card. The concrete operations vary from the mobile phone models.

how to format sd card on Android phone by steps
iPhone users can format the SD card to rebuild the file system. IOS9.2 and the latter versions support the Apple’s Lightning-to-SD-card Reader accessory, which lets users transfer data between an SD card and iPhone. But rebuilding the file system should be finished on the computer.
format apple sd card
1. Use a card reader to connect the SD card to the computer. Go to the device icon and right-click on [Format].

2. In the formatting window, select a file system, [FAT32] or [exFAT]. If the SD card had ever been formatted, you can check [Quick Format]. Finally, click [Start] to format the card.

check quick format

Part 2: Recover Data from Android SD Card

The data will be lost from the SD card due to the errors on the file system, the corrupted files or the other reasons. As for these situations, you can refer to the following methods to recover the SD card data.

Recover on Android Phone

Recover SD card through Cloud services

Now, most of mobile phone suppliers launch the cloud services for users to back up data, like Apple iCloud and HUAWEI Cloud. If you are used to backing up the SD card data to the cloud space, you can recover the lost data from the cloud space.

use phone cloud services to recover mobile data

Use Dumpster to recover SD card (Android)

Dumpster, a multifunctional app for Android, can recover various types of data, including image, video, audio and document. It allows users to quickly filter out the target files through searching by date, name and file type.

use dumpter to recover data when sd card is not showing up on android

Recover on PC

If you want to recover the SD card on PC, we recommend you use Renee Undeleter.

Renee Undeleter, the professional software for data recovery, supports to recover many file types, especially the formatted SD card. Designed with three scan modes, fast partition, whole partition scan and whole disk scan, it meets the users’ need.

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Easy to use Only simple steps to recover data from storage devices.

Multiple scan modes Fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan for different recovery needs.

File types Support to recover pictures, videos, audios, documents, mails, etc.

Supported storage devices Recover data from recycle bin, SD card, external disk, etc.

Supported systems Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000 and Mac OS X10.6, 10.7, 10.8.

Easy to use Only simple steps to recover data from storage devices.

Multiple scan modes - 3 scan modes for different recovery needs.

Supported storage devices Recover data from recycle bin, SD card, external disk, etc.

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1. Download and install Renee Undeleter on your PC.
press to the download button
mac download button gif
2. Open Renee Undeleter and select one of the scan modes (Fast Partition Scan, Whole Partition Scan and Whole Disk Scan). In this case, we select [Fast Partition Scan].
data recovery in renee undeleter
3. Select the target SD card and click [Next] to go on.
4. Select a scan way based on your need. “Fast scan” can help you find most of the files in a few minutes while “Deep Scan” can go through the entire drive to find more files.
select fast scan mode in renee undeleter
5. Preview and check the scan results. Of course, you can search the target files. Then, click [Recover] to save the results.
select the target files to recover in fast partition scan