SD card format errors

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I have a Sandisk Ultra Plus 64GB Micro SD XC1 card that I cannot reformat.  As soon as I insert it (Microsoft surface book  windows 10 pro) the system says it needs to scan the device.  Clicking on the scan I select “scan and fix” and then “repair drive”.  Error checking returns “There was a problem repairing this drive”.  I ran CMD as administrator then “CHKDSK D: /F” and get the message “corruption was found while examining the volume bitmap”.  Scannow does not fix the problem nor does formatting.  File explorer shows the drive with its files and folders and I can open the files.  If I select all the files and permanently delete them, they appear to be gone until I exit the drive and reselect the drive – then all the files are still there.

How do I format this SD?  Others on Google claim to fix theirs with third party software but I don’t want to purchase software that costs more than an old SD card.

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Try using Diskpart to erase the card.

1- Open a DOS prompt and enter diskpart
2- list disk to show all the drives
3- select disk # (# = the SD card)
4- clean to wipe all the data on the SD card
5- create part primary to create a new partition on the SD card
6- select part 1
7- active to make it active.
8- format fs=ntfs/or fs=fat32 to format the SD card
9- Exit twice to close diskpart & DOS prompt

If that doesn’t work, try the SD Memory Card Formatter

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WSkjgcsmith

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Step 5 “create part primary” timed out, so I downloaded the “SD Memory Card Formatter”.  it recognized the SD card type and size.  I selected the “overwrite format” and after a long time it completed successfully.  I ejected the SD card and re-inserted and again got the message “SDXC (D:) there’s a problem with this drive.  Scan the drive now and fix”.  Selecting the “Scan and fix” then “repair drive” resulted with the message “Windows was unable to repair the drive”.  So I tried a “Quick Format” with this program and got the same successfully completed message.  It knows the file system is exFAT, capacity and Free space both 59.4GB with cluster size 128kb.  So the SD looks good, but when I look at it in File Explorer, it still shows all the files/folders with only 14.1 GB free.  Interestingly, FE again allowed me to delete all the files/directories but ejecting and re-inserting the SD still has all the files/directories.  So the SD formatting program thinks it worked but did not.

Thoughts?

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I have used Steve Gibson’s InitDisk to fix 4 usb drives that were behaving similar to your description. (constantly requiring scan disk & some that could not format). I have not run on SD cards, but believe I read in his forum that it worked on SD. Hope is helpful.
https://www.grc.com/initdisk.htm

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Microfix

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Downloaded and ran INITDISK.  gave it the NUKE command.  I still have the same problem.  the program unmounted the SD card, rewrote the MBR and FAT file system and brought back online.  Windows still says the file system has problems – corruption was found while examining the volume bitmap.

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Sueska

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WSkjgcsmith wrote:

I don’t want to purchase software that costs more than an old SD card.

USB thumb drives, SD cards and microSD cards all use the same NAND memory as SSD’s and, just like SSD’s, can only be written to a limited number of times before they become read only.

The Sandisk Ultra plus uses SLC NAND which, according to SD Card Write Cycles Overview, will only last 10,000 – 20,000 write cycles for a 64Gb card.

I’d say either yours has reached that point and/or the write controller has failed.

Regardless, I’d suggest you get a new one.

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You could try the GRC Validrive. This will tell you if your stick is ailing.

cheers, Paul

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WSkjgcsmith

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Have you tried using SD Association’s SD Card Formatter …

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

Win7 - PRO & Ultimate, x64 & x86
Win8.1 - PRO, x64 & x86
Groups A, B & ABS

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WSkjgcsmith

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I suggested that back in reply #2750223 and it didn’t work.

WSkjgcsmith wrote:

I downloaded the “SD Memory Card Formatter”. it recognized the SD card type and size. I selected the “overwrite format” and after a long time it completed successfully. I ejected the SD card and re-inserted and again got the message “SDXC (D:) there’s a problem with this drive.

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Very interesting to learn about the “NAND Read Write Limits”.  I always knew any storage media had RW limits, so that may be the problem.

I ran the GRC Validrive, says no valid storage detected:

Report #1
test date and time 2/22/2025 at 9:17 AM
declared drive size 63,864,569,856 (63.9GB)
validated drive size no valid storage detected
highest valid region no valid storage detected
hub or drive vendor realsil
hub or drive product rtsuerlun0
serial number 0000

performance details
read write
samples 1,152 1,152
minimum 250 201
maximum 19,190 14,203
average 1,885 802
median 1,069 749
std dev 1,518 710
variance 0.806 0.885
total time 2,171,679 924,418
percent 70.14% 29.86%
time measurements in microseconds

I also found the program H2Testw on MajorGeeks (referenced from an article on Darwinsdata.com on how to check the life of an SD card). Provides a little different info. Again this program confirms the media is defective.

So, This SD Card goes to the Trash Bin.

Thanks everyone for your help, I learned some new tools.

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satrow

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Luckily you probably didn’t have valuable data on the SD.

Don’t buy Sandisk again.

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Amazing, Sandisk use to be a brand we could trust. In my case, the Micro SD was used for extra storage on my wife’s HP tablet. It had so little memory and storage, you had to use the SD card just to do software updates. Anyways, I was junking the unit by recovering to factory and that’s when I tried to reclaim the SD card. Bet that SD card went bad long ago and that is why the tablet stopped updating and became so dang slow. She has a newer one now with lots of memory/space so this one can go to grandkids.
Will look into converting from windows 10 to android or linux

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Alex5723

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