Fixed: SD Card Not Showing Full Capacity in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7

Issuses about SD Card not showing full capacity

“I have a 64GB Samsung SD card and it’s not showing full capacity, so I determined to format the SD card. However, the 64GB Samsung SD card only shows 29GB not 64GB after formatting, it seems that the format operation cuts off some space on it. Any ideas to restore Samsung SD card size? Thanks.”

"I have a 32GB SD card not showing full capacity in my Windows 7 computer, I can’t format it to the correct size with Windows format tool. How can I figure it out? Any help would be appreciated.”

Why is SD Card not showing full capacity in Windows?

There are some reasons should take responsible for the SD card not showing less space, like virus attack, non genuine memory card, or other factors. You’d better to remove virus using antivirus software, or purchase a SD card through official channels in case your rights are violated. On the other hand, formatting your SD card with an improper format tool also leads to the result that SD card size is wrong. If so, you’d better format your SD card or memory card with powerful ways.

How to restore SD card to full capacity in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7?

If it is the improper formatting methods that makes your SD card show less space, you can try the following two ways to format SD card to full capacity: one is DiskPart command, the other is the third-party partition manager.

Note: formatting will erase all data on the SD card, so back up everything required beforehand, please.

1. Format SD Card to full capacity with DiskPart Command

Press WIN+R key combination to open Run dialogue, input “cmd” and press “Enter” to open the Command Prompt window. Then execute the following commands in turn:

• diskpart

• list disk

• select disk m, where m is the SD card number.

• clean

• create partition primary

• format fs=ntfs quick

Wait for a moment, SD card will be formatted successfully. Then you can go to File Explorer to check whether the SD card shows full capacity now.

2. Restore SD card to full capacity with partition manager

When your SD card is not showing full capacity, you can turn to the reliable partition manager: AOMEI Partition Assistant. It is more powerful than DiskPart and can format SD card to full size effectively. Besides, it is even able to format corrupted SD card. Here is how it works.

AOMEI Partition Assistant

The Best Windows Disk Partition Manager and PC Optimizer

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

Step 1. Download AOMEI Partition Assistant, install and run the program. Insert your SD card into your computer via SD card reader and verfiy it is detected successfully.

Step 2. Right-click the SD card partition and select Format Partition.

Step 3. Choose a File System for you SD card, hit OK.

Step 4. Press Apply at the upper left corner to format your SD card.

Then, the SD card will be showing correct capacity.

Further reading:
When your SD card is over 32GB, but formatted with FAT32 file system, it will also shows wrong size because Windows native tools can only format a partition to FAT32 up to 32GB, and you will find the rest space shows as unallocated space in Disk Management. In this case, you can try the 2 methods below:
1. Delete the present partition and create a new partition with NTFS file system, which can support larger partition. If you need the FAT32 file system for better compatibilty with more devices, you can delete the present partition, and make a FAT32 partition with full capacity with the AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, which allows you to format 32GB+ drive to FAT32, such as formatting 2TB drive to FAT32.
2. Convert the file system from FAT32 to NTFS without formatting via the “NTFS and FAT32 Converter” of the partition manager, and merge the unallocated space, surpassing the 32GB, into the present NTFS partition via its “Merge Partitions” feature.

Summary

So, after reading this post, you can easily fix “SD card not showing full capacity” issue in Windows 10, 8, 7. Apparently, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard can help you a lot. Besides, it also allows you to create a second partition on SD card, create a bootable USB drive, and more. Furthermore, AOMEI Partition Assistant offers many other features, which permits you to allocate free space from one to the other, convert primary partition to logical, convert system disk between MBR and GPT, etc.