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I am using 16 gb sd card I used mini tools wizard 9.1 to do a surface scan on my 16gb sd card and I got 960 bad sectors, my question is how do I fix it?

Ryfoz
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4 Answers4

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how do I fix it?

You do not. You make a backup of the contents and then buy a new SD card.

If you have an old style disk (aka rotating rust) then you could reformat that floppy and that might clear bad sectors. If you had an old style HDD and you could low level format it then you might clear some bad sectors.

But on flash based media (SDcards, pendrives, SSD's, ... ) you simply have a cell which works until worn out. SSDs try to do smart things with wear-leveling. Old SD cards did not. And a 16gb (2GB) cards is probably rather old.

As per Grawity's comment:

With certain USB flash controllers, a low-level format is still possible – while it won't repair bad blocks, it can at least mark them as such, shrinking the total "disk" size to make it usable again.

However I am not sure that I will ever trust that card/drive with important data again.

Hennes
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Using the format tool from the SD Association:

Link

You should format the drive, a few times if you like, do not use Quick Format if it presents the option. If its possible the overwriting of the sectors will get them back into working order, if not then they're toast. Only some SD cards support wear leveling to remove such bad sectors so its usually a good time to start looking for a new card.

Linef4ult
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It took me a bit of time reading both present answers to figure out how 2 answers that seem to contradict each other at first read be both telling the truth. Adding what I already know I was able to link it together.

I can see how this might be a problem for you to figure out what the real answer is, so I decided to write an answer of my own.

Lets first explain how bad sectors work. A harddrive or SD card is an electronic device that uses some technique to store data in the form of 0 and 1's. Lots of writes and thus lots of changing 0's and 1's may wear out one of those positions. Once this happens, they become bad sectors.

Can it be fixed? No. You can format the drive, and it will rearrange the device to work around the bad sectors, but the drive will become smaller even if very marginal. You may be able to work with the device for another few years without any significant problems, though.

The advice is, that if you have money to spare, get yourself a new drive.

LPChip
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Very old post, but still actual problem: Let's me point my case, with a new SDcard, out of box (64GB samsung verified), never used. Due to trying to solve problem of SDcard not recognized on a tablet dualboot Android/Windows 10, I had to plug/unplug this card (and a couple of its brothers) surely more than 100 times (surely cause of damage ?), format, re-format and re-re-reformat, Fat, exfat, ntfs, etc... tons of works this poor card could support !

At last (after solving problem), I wanted to have then, a "clear and proper" SDcard for use and begin to check "properly" it... What was my surprise to see that half of it (half of 64GB) was covered by bad sectors !!!

So, despited, I did: - Formatage by Windows 10 included softwares (quick and no quick mode) > no result ! - I read this old (2004) HP USB FORMAT TOOL is the best for that (better than SDFormatter)... Not true, no improvement seen ! - Then, Formatage low level (wiping with bit=0) done with Mini Partition wizard > no improvement - Finally, back to SDFormatter, I did and did again (option FULL overwrite), knowing 64GB takes 1 hour to perform !

... At the 3rd pass, bad sectors had completely disappeared ! Hurrah !

For information, bad sectors were revealed by Mini Partition Tool (Surface test), while Chkdsk by Windows said everything is fine ???

Hope this can help

Wichu
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