How to Fix a Broken SD Card

Well, luckily this isn't a common issue, however, it can be an extremely inconvenient one...

If you've found yourself on this page, it's likely you've discovered a chip or broken bit in your otherwise pristine SD card. Now this fix is only temporary, but it can save you from losing tons of potentially irreplaceable memories or data. So whether your new SD card decided to go rogue and behead itself, of your trusty, tried and true SD just bit the dust, here's how we're gonna fix it enough to get whatever is on it, off of it.

1. Check the Damage

How Damaged is the Card?

Depending on how damaged your card is, you may still be able to insert it into a wifi camera or device & export the data from it that way.

2. Get Supplies

If you still need to insert your SD card into a card reader, we'll need to make it readable.

SD cards are "activated" by size and shape. Basically the readers determine what type of card (or if it's even a card at all) by the size and shape. So we need to recreate the right geometry for your card.

Here's what we'll need:

3. Recreate the Shape

Now you'll use either your rigid paper tape or other form of paper to recreate the missing part of your SD card.

This can be a time consuming task because we're working with very small pieces. However, you don't want to cover up any of the metal pieces as they need to be exposed for the reader to read. So take your time.

4. Use an External Card Reader

Once you've got the shape back, insert the card into an external card reader to see if it works. Try to avoid using your expensive computer's card reader if you can as we don't want any pieces of paper or tape getting stuck in your computer reader.

5. All Done!

That's it! Hopefully your computer was able to connect to your card via this workaround. However, this is only a temporary fix, so you should replace your SD card as soon as you're able to.