AOMEI Partition Assistant

The error of SD card not showing up is not a single case in our daily life, especially when you would like to access the data in the SD card from smart phone to personal computer. After inserting the SD card to your computer, there is no SD card icon showing up in the Windows File Explorer. Due to the complicated causes behind the issue, there are more than one solution to fix the error. Since the SD card is in such a fragile condition, once it’s not showing up in your computer, the problem becomes tougher. Here we have summed up several solutions based on the specific causes, you can choose the ideal one to fix your SD card.

The Main Causes of the SD Card Not Showing Up??

There are many factors lead the SD card not showing up, including the physical damage and logical damage. We have listed the most common causes below:

  • If your SD Card couldn’t be readable in the phone, you can try to connect it with another good USB adapter or card reader. If it can be readable, that means there are some problem with your phone; if it is not showing up, the USB card is damaged.
  • If your SD card is in a write-protection situation, the SD card can’t be showing up neither.
  • If the SD card doesn’t show up in the Windows File Explorer, but you can see it in with a yellow mark on the bottom right corner in the Windows. It means that there are some problem with the card reader driver.
  • Another cause to the SD card doesn’t show up could be drive letter missing or drive letter conflict.
  • If the SD card has the risk of virus, you can’t make it showed up.

Method 1: Update SD Card Driver

Since the most common cause of a SD card not showing up is outdated card reader driver. To check your driver is in a good condition should be first method to fix the error. Even driver updates in many devices will be downloaded and updated automatically in Windows, there are some problem in it inevitably. You can try to update the SD card driver.

 Update SD Card Driver
Update SD Card Driver

Connect your SD to the computer and click the Start button, input Device Manager and choose your USB device. Then tap and hold the removable device, choose the Update Driver and tick the option Search automatically for updated driver software as well.

If the update SD card driver doesn’t work, you can give a try with installing the driver again. Follow the above steps and find the USB drive, select Uninstall, then click OK. Then restart the PC, Windows will attempt to reinstall the driver.

Method 2: Assign Drive Letter to USB Drive

Assign Drive Letter to USB Drive
Assign Drive Letter to USB Drive

If there is no problem with your USB drive, the drive letter will be one of the main reasons to make SD card not showing up. To solve the problem, you can assign drive drive letter to the USB drive.

Firstly, plug in the USB drive on the computer, after the Windows system finishing recognizing, open the disk management with Windows + R, input diskmgmt.msc. Then you will be lead to the Disk Management utility, and right click the remove device and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths. Just give an unique drive letter to it, the USB drive will be showing up successfully.

Method 3: Format the USB Drive and Remove Write-Protection

If your SD card is in a write-protection situation, the SD card can’t be showing up neither. To remove the write-protect state, you need to format the USB drive and also remove the write-protection in registry editor. You can use diskpart.exe to format the removable device. Go to Run by pressing Windows key and R key, and input diskpart, click OK to enter the diskpart command prompt. Type the following command to finish the format process with enter after each:

list disk

select disk # (# is your USB drive)

attributes disk clear readonly

Exit

Format the USB Drive
Format the USB Drive

Then you can remove the write protection state from the USB drive successfully.

However, command prompt line is not so easy as some third party software due to its complex. Here I recommend the free partition software AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, which is much easier and simpler comparing with using CMD. You can remove the write protection state with it safely and easily.

AOMEI Partition assistant

Download the freeware, install and launch it. You can find all the disk drives will be showing up in the workstation, just choose the USB device, right-click it and select Format Partition. You need to choose partition label, file system and cluster size based on your requirements. Click Apply button after checking all the steps without problem.

Besides the basic features to manage Windows hard drive and partitions, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard provides several advanced functions to simplify the tedious works with partitions and hard drive, such as to convert mbr to gpt, to migrate OS from HDD( hard drive disk) to SSD, to clone hard disk and so on.

Note: all the steps with format process running with both command prompt line and AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard will make the data in the USB drive lost, please make a data backup before taking action;

Currently, AOMEI Partition Assistant only supports Windows operating system.

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