How to Check SD Card Health for Bad Blocks and Protect Data

A bad sector or a bad block in computing refers to an unreadable disk sector on a disk storage unit. A hard drive, USB flash drive, SD card, pen drive, etc. can suffer from bad sectors. Today we will focus on SD card bad sectors.

If your SD card has bad blocks, the pictures, videos, music files, and other files can get lost. To avoid accidental data loss, you can check SD card health and then take measures to protect your data before the SD card fails eventually.

How to Check SD Card Bad Blocks in Windows

You can check for bad sectors by looking for common symptoms or scanning the SD card with a professional disk testing tool.

Symptoms of SD Card That Has Bad Sectors

If your SD card runs into one of the following situations, it means it may encounter bad blocks. See the list:

1. SD card shows 0 bytes or empty (related post: How to Fix USB Shows 0 Bytes & Recover USB Files)
2. SD card is not detected or recognized if you connect it to a computer, camera, or mobile phone
3. Windows cannot format the SD card
4. SD card cannot read or write data
5. Windows reports errors related to bad sectors

These situations may appear due to a virus infection, improper usage, extensive usage (SD card has completed its read/write cycle), power failure, poor quality, etc.

Check Bad Blocks SD Card via MiniTool Partition Wizard

MiniTool Partition Wizard, a partition manager for Windows 11/10, can scan an entire SD card for bad blocks with its Surface Test feature. Once detected, bad sectors are marked in red for easy identification.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: Connect your SD card using a card reader to your computer.

Step 2:  Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to enter its main interface.

Step 3: Right-click on this SD card and choose Surface Test.

Step 4: Click Start Now. After some time, the scan finishes and a result shows to you.

How to Mark Bad Sectors

The CHKDSK command is a powerful tool to check file system for logical and physical errors. If you use it with the /f and /r parameters, this tool is helpful to fix hard drive errors and locate bad sectors & recover readable information.

See how to fix an SD card with bad blocks:

Step 1: Connect the SD card to your computer and remember its drive letter.

Step 2: Press Win + R on the keyboard to open Run, input cmd, and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Click Yes in the UAC prompt to run Command Prompt with admin privileges.

Step 3: In the CMD window, type chkdsk N: /f /r and press Enter. Here N refers to the drive letter of your SD card and replace it with your own.

How to Keep Data Safe on SD Card with Bad Sectors

To protect SD card data, it is recommend to back up your precious photos, videos, and other files. Here, you can run the professional PC backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker.

Guide: What Are Bad Sectors on Hard Drive & How to Check

Learn what bad sectors on hard drive are, causes, symptoms, and solutions. Protect data with repair tips, disk cloning, and backup methods.

Read More

This free backup program is designed to create backups for your files, folders, partitions, a disk, and a Windows operating system. Once system crashes or data loss happens, you can restore the PC to a normal state or get lost files back.

If you need to create automatic backups, incremental backups, or differential backups, MiniTool ShadowMaker can meet your demands. Now, get it via the following button and install it on the Windows 11/10/8/7 PC for a data backup.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

See how to back up data on an SD card with bad sectors:

Step 1: Connect SD card to your PC, launch MiniTool ShadowMaker and click Keep Trial.

Step 2: Move to the Backup tab, tap on SOURCE > Folders and Files, click Computer, open your SD card to choose the items you want to back up, and click OK.

Step 3: Choose a safe location to save the backup file by clicking DESTINATION.

Step 4: Hit on Back Up Now to start the data backup at once.

In addition to data backup, you can choose to clone the bad SD card to another SD card to keep all the data safe with MiniTool ShadowMaker’s Clone Disk feature. Here is a related post for you – How to Back up SD Card to PC? Try 3 Ways to Protect Data.

Conclusion

Checking an SD card for bad blocks can help identify potential storage problems before they cause data loss. If many bad sectors are detected, back up important files immediately to prevent unexpected loss. If the problem continues, replace the SD card.

When having issues with our software, please send an email to [email protected].

Check Bad Blocks SD Card FAQ