Feb. 7, 2022
Gather Your Materials
- Computer running windows 7 or newer or Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or newer.
- An internet connection, wired or wireless
- Micro SD card and adapter
Download and Install the Software
If you don’t have it already, head over to https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/
Click on the download link and select the version of “SD Memory Card formatter” for your computer.
Read the user agreement then click on “accept”.
Next, extract the zip file.
Run “SD Card Formatter 5.0.1 Setup.exe”.
Accept the default installation options.
Format the Card
Insert your SD Card into your PC. If you don’t have an SD Card slot, you can buy an inexpensive USB SD Card reader. I’ve seen them as low as $7.00, but most are between $10.00 and $20.00.
Note the Drive letter for your SD Card. This is important to prevent formatting the wrong device. The SD Card formatter will offer to format USB drives as well as SD Cards.
Launch “SD Card Formatter”.
Select your SD Card’s drive letter from the dropdown box.
Select a quick format or an overwrite format. A quick format is usually ok. You might want to do an overwrite format if you have sensitive data on the SD Card or if the card is corrupt. The overwrite format will usually fix a corrupt or unreadable card.
Give it a volume label to identify the contents or purpose for the SD Card. As an example you might want to label it “phone” if it’s for phone data or “camera” if you use it in your camera. The label can be 13 characters long, use letters and numbers but no spaces.
Now hit format. Select yes when the format warning appears.
In a few seconds you’ll see a window showing the file system, capacity, free space, cluster size and label. Select ok.
Your format is now complete. You can exit the sd formatter app.
Troubleshooting
Choose CHS format size adjustment if the card is not reporting the correct size. Meaning, an 8GB card is reporting only 1.86GB of total volume. This sometimes happens when you use a card as a linux boot disk then want to reformat it.
