In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View Show All Devices. If Disk Utility isn’t open, click the Launchpad icon in the Dock, type Disk Utility in the Search field, then click the Disk Utility icon. Disk Utility is the perfect choice for creating a partition of your Mac’s hard drive. It is a built-in app on all Macs and straightforward to use. When you make a partition, you will be presented with easy to understand pie chart of your hard disk space. Visually it shows a friendly graphical interface that even non-techies can understand.
Disk Utility User Guide
Disk Utility can check for and fix errors related to the formatting and directory structure of a Mac storage device.
Disk Utility can fix certain disk problems—for example, multiple apps quit unexpectedly, a file is corrupted, an external device doesn’t work properly, or your computer won’t start up. Disk Utility can’t detect or repair all problems that a disk may have.
To check and repair a disk, you need to run First Aid on each volume and container on the storage device in turn, then run it on the storage device itself.
If Disk Utility tells you the disk is about to fail, back up your data and replace the disk—you can’t repair it.
In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices.
If Disk Utility isn’t open, click the Launchpad icon in the Dock, type Disk Utility in the Search field, then click the Disk Utility icon .
Note: If you’re checking your startup disk or startup volume, restart your computer in macOS Recovery, select Disk Utility in the macOS Recovery window, then click Continue. If you check your startup volume (Macintosh HD), make sure you also check your data volume (Macintosh HD - Data).
In the sidebar, select a volume, then click the First Aid button .
In the First Aid dialog, click Run, then follow the onscreen instructions.
When the First Aid process is complete, click Done.
Repeat steps 2 through 4 for each volume on the storage device.
In the sidebar, select a container, then click the First Aid button .
In the First Aid dialog, click Run, then follow the onscreen instructions.
When the First Aid process is complete, click Done.
Repeat steps 6 through 8 for each container on the storage device.
In the sidebar, select the storage device, then click the First Aid button .
In the First Aid dialog, click Run, then follow the onscreen instructions.
When the First Aid process is complete, click Done.
If Disk Utility reports that the disk appears to be OK or has been repaired, you’re done. You can click Show Details to see more information about the repairs. Otherwise, you may need to do one of the following.
If Disk Utility reports “overlapped extent allocation” errors, two or more files occupy the same space on your disk, and at least one of them is likely to be corrupted. You need to check each file in the list of affected files. Most of the files in the list have aliases in a DamagedFiles folder at the top level of your disk.
If you can replace a file or re-create it, delete it.
If it contains information you need, open it and examine its data to make sure it hasn’t been corrupted.
If Disk Utility can’t repair your disk, or you receive a report that the First Aid process failed, try to repair the disk or partition again. If that doesn’t work, back up as much of your data as possible, reformat the disk, reinstall macOS, then restore your backed-up data.
If your Mac has a Fusion Drive and you see a flashing question mark or alert, see the troubleshooting section of the Apple Support article About Fusion Drive, a storage option for some Mac computers.
If you continue to have problems with your disk or it can’t be repaired, it may be physically damaged and need to be replaced. For information about servicing your Mac, see Find out how to service or repair your Mac.
“Can’t format SD card” is a mysteriously annoying error. Most of the time it is quite difficult to deduce the reason for the error; the SD card can be damaged or corrupted. How to tackle such an issue, if you cannot format it, SD card is of no use. Hence, we bring you this comprehensive content on how to fix the error “Can’t format SD Card” on Mac and Windows.
Note: With deeper investigation, this format error was found to be more prevalent in SanDisk SD cards. Even SanDisk users can make perfect use of this article to fix the error.
Why Can’t I Format My SD card?
“Why can’t I format my SD card on my computer, camera, or phone?”
When you experience this specific error you won’t be able to format your SD card not only on your computer but also on any other device. It is because.
- Memory card is write protected
- Memory card is severely damaged
If your SD card is write-protected, you cannot make any changes to your SD card. That includes formatting the SD card. However, you can disable write protection and fix the error
But, if the error is because your SD card is severely damaged your first priority must be recovering data from the SD card. When your SD is severely damaged, it will reach to an extent where it can’t even mount a file system. When you format an SD card it means mounting a new file system that tracks the storage on your SD card. So damage or corruption is the reason why your SD card is not formatting.
When your SD card is experiencing such an error, you cannot even access the drive and restore the data from it.
“Considering the fact that SD cards are majorly used on cameras, and they store the most important memories, not just the data. This is all the more reason why recover the files from corrupted SD cards becomes a priority before fixing it.”
Now to the actual question, what is the best possible way to recover data from an SD card that is not supported to format. Remo data recovery software, the best software to recover photos from SD cards, with more than 10 million downloads can be the key. More than data recovery Remo has an impressive and unique feature that will enable users to create an identical image of any severely damaged storage drive. By creating an identical image, you are creating an exact copy of all the files existing on your severely damaged SD card.
Why Should I Create an Image of My SD card?
With the help of Remo, you can also directly recover data from a damaged SD without creating an image. But considering the factors (bad sectors, virus infections) and the severity of the damage, creating an image of SD will yield exceptional results.
This means no matter how severely your SD card is damaged, you can still recover the data from it. You can find a detailed explanation of how to create an exact image of the SD card which is unable to format.
How to Create an Image of an SD card that Won’t Format?
Download and install Remo data recovery Software. Launch the application and follow the steps that are mentioned below.
Mac Disk Utility Sd Card Waiting For Partitions To Activate Key
From the home screen, select the recover partition option where you can see your SD card listed with other drives that are existing on your computer.
Select the SD card and from the top right corner click on options (one with 3 horizontal lines) and select the save image option. This will prompt a save as a window, select the desired location, file name, and click on save to create an exact image of your SD card.
Since you are creating an image of an entire SD card, make sure the location you are saving your image has enough storage space.
After creating the image file, you can extract files, photos, or videos that are existing on your SD card from that image file. This is the most convenient method to recover the data from severely damaged SD card.
How to Fix “Micro SD Card Cannot format” Error?
As previously mentioned, two main reasons for this error are write-protected SD card and Severely damaged SD card. The following are instructions on how to fix this error.
Unlock the Micro SD card
Micro SD card is locked is one of the terminology used for a write-protected SD Card. As discussed earlier, when a micro SD card is locked or write-protected you cannot make any changes since it works in read-only mode. You can disable the write protection on the SD card to fix the error.
An SD card can be severely damaged due to
- High-level bad sectors (Here you can know more about uncorrectable sectors)
- Severe virus infection
The best method to fix an SD card that won’t format is by force formatting the SD card using CMD.
How to Force Format an SD Card?
Mac Disk Utility Waiting For Partitions To Activate
Open Command Prompt by right-clicking Start >Command Prompt (Admin)or search cmd from Start
- Type: diskpart to bring up DiskPart utility
- Type: list disk and hit Enter
- Type: select disk 1 and hit Enter (Replace 1 with the drive number of your SD card)
- Type: clean and hit Enter
- Type: create partition primary and hit Enter
- Type: select disk 1 and hit Enter (Replace 1 with the drive number of SD card)
- Type: active to make the SD card partition activate
- Type: format fs = NTFS or format fs = fat32 and hit Enter
- Type: assign letter = F
- After this, type exit to finish the process
After force formatting the SD you need to fix the Bad sectors using the CHKDSK on SD card.
CHKDSK format SD card
CHKDSK is one of the most prominent utilities on windows that will help you fix all the bad sectors that exist on your SD card. The following are the instructions on how to do it.
- Right-click on Start to select Command Prompt (Admin) or click Start and type: cmd > click exe to bring up Command Prompt
- Sign in as an administrator and type: chkdsk E: /f /r and hit Enter; (Replace E: with the drive letter of your SanDisk SD card)
- Wait for the process to complete (Process time might vary based on the size of SD card)
- Exit CMD and enter Disk Management tool, find SD card, right-click on it, and select Format volume
- Reset file system and drive letter of the SD card, click OK to confirm the format action
Both the aforementioned methods can be used on all brands of SD card such as SanDisk, Sony, Kingston, Transcend, etc. It also works on all formats of SD cards such as Micro SD, SD, SDHC, SDXC.
How to Fix if SD card Won’t Format on Camera
Generally, when you insert an SD card into a camera sometimes it will prompt to format the SD card. This will fix any errors in incompatible file system errors. However, in this particular case, even that won’t fix the error.
Even to fix the error that the SD card will not format on camera you need to use the methods mentioned above. Make sure you use the perfectly working SD card adapter or card reader while connecting it to a computer or laptop.
How to Fix if SD Card Can’t Format on Mac or Android
You can use the same methods mentioned above to fix SD card not readable or format error on Android. However, in the case of Mac, there is no specific fix other than unlocking the SD card or disabling the write protection on Mac. Nevertheless, the most crucial aspect to remember is to recover the data from the SD before fixing it. Remo Recover is also available on Mac. Hence, you can even download Remo on your Mac and successfully recover the data from it.
Finally, if you are unable to fix the error, it means that your SD card is unfixable. If your SD card is still under warranty time, better contact the brand, and claim to exchange the memory card. But, don’t forget to recover your most precious data from the SD card before exchanging it.
P.S most SD card brands won’t recover data for you.