You may meet the error that SD card is write protected when you try to store files onto the SD card or try to format the SD card. In order to successfully write or delete files on the SD card, or format the SD card to fix errors for reuse, you can learn below for how to remove write protection on SD card. For lost data on the SD card due to unknown errors, you can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover lost files.
How to Remove Write Protection on SD Card
Checking the explanation of Write Protection on Wikipedia, you can know that it is a physical mechanism built in the SD card, USB, hard disk, etc. to prevent people from modifying or deleting data on the storage media. It can prevent accidental data loss or virus attacks to some extent.
If you want to remove the write protection on micro SD card, memory card, etc. you can do it with CMD (Command Prompt). Check the detailed steps below.
Step 1. Use an SD card reader to connect the SD card with your Windows computer.
Step 2. Open Windows 10 Command Prompt utility. Click Start menu, type command prompt, right-click Command Prompt app and select Run as administrator to open it.
Step 3. Now you are in Command Prompt, type diskpart and press Enter key to open Windows built-in Diskpart tool that allows you to manage your hard drives with command lines.
Step 4. In Diskpart window, type the following command lines and press Enter key after each command line. After this, you should be able to read and write data on the SD card or smoothly format the SD card.
- list disk (This command displays all detected disks with disk information.)
- select disk * (This command lets you choose the target disk. Replace “*” with the disk number of your SD card. You may recognize the target disk by viewing the disk information like hard drive size, etc. Make sure to select the right disk.)
- attributes disk clear readonly (This command will remove write protection of the SD card)
Tip: If you still can’t write data to the SD card after clearing its write protection, you can do another action in Command Prompt to fix possible errors on the SD card, namely, run a CHKDSK scan.
Enter into Command Prompt again, and type chkdsk *: /f /r command and press Enter to check and fix possible SD card errors. You should replace “*” with the exact drive letter of the SD card which you can find out in File Explorer after connecting the SD card to your Windows computer.
How to Recover Data from SD Card before Formatted or even Formatted?
The last method you can go to fix SD card write protection is to formatted the problematic SD card, which may cause data lost. No matter you want to recover data from the problematic SD card drive or you want to recover data from SD card after formatted, you can free try the professional SD card data recovery software – Tenorshare 4DDiG, within 3 steps, you can easily get your data back from formatted SD card.
Step 1: Free download 4DDiG on your PC, then connect your SD card to your windows/mac. Now choose SD card to start scanning.
Step 2: Wait for 4DDiG to look for the whole data on your SD card, the scanning time will depends on the files sizes. Once it is done, you can preview each scanned out files.
Step 3: Simply choose the files you want to recover and click on “Recover”, and that’s all, your lost files from formatted SD card will be back soon.
How to Format a Write Protected SD Card
If you meet the error message “The disk is write protected” when trying to format a problematic SD card, you can try to format the SD card again after removing write protection on the SD card.
MiniTool Partition Wizard, a professional disk partition manager for Windows, allows you to format SD card for free in a few clicks.
- After connecting the SD card to your Windows computer, you can run MiniTool Partition Wizard.
- Next right-click the partition of your SD card and select Format.
- In the pop-up Format Partition window, choose a desired file system format like FAT32 or NTFS. Click OK
- At last, click Apply button at the bottom-left corner on the main UI of the software to start formatting the SD card.
How to Recover Data from SD Card (Formatted/Corrupted)
If you lost some important data on the SD card due to virus or logical disk errors, you can try MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover the lost files for free.
- Connect your SD card to your Windows computer, and launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery.
- Click Removable Disk Drive in the left column, and select your SD card in the right window. Click Scan button.
- Let the scan process finish. You can then check the scan result to find needed files, check them and click Save button. In the pop-up window, choose a preferred destination folder (not the original SD card) to store the recovered files.
Conclusion
SD card write protected? Hope now you know how to easily remove write protection on the SD card so as to store new files onto it again. To format a write protected SD card, you should clear its write protection attribute first. To recover deleted or lost files from SD card, microSD card, memory card, computer, external hard drive, etc. you can try MiniTool Power Data Recovery.