This article aims to tell you how to format SD card on Windows 10, 8, 7 computer. Four free methods will be introduced to help you format SD card to FAT32, NTFS or other file systems easily.
There are many reasons for users to format SD card. Under many circumstances, you may need to format SD card to NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT file system.
1. Format SD card for being compatible with different devices such as camera, smartphone, game console, music player, etc.
2. When your SD card is corrupted, damaged, or inaccessible, formatting it may help repair the SD card.
3. Format SD card also can help you clean the SD card, so that you can use it as a new storage device.
Man users would like to know how to format SD card, pen drive, memory card or other flash drive on Windows 10. Here we will provide you how to format SD card on Windows 10 with Windows File Explorer, Windows Disk Management, CMD, and SD card formatter. All of them are free to use.
✍Caution:
Formatting SD card/pen drive/memory card or other flash drives on Windows 10 will erase all data on the devices. It is recommended to save data before formatting SD card.
You can follow the content below to format SD card on Windows 10 easily.
1>. Connect your SD card to your Windows 10 computer with a card reader. Make sure it can be detected.
2>. Double-click “This PC” on the desktop or press “Windows + E” keys simultaneously to open Windows Explorer. In this window, you can see the connected SD card.
3>. Right-click the SD card and select "Format" in the pop-up menu.
4>. Here, you can select the file system which you want to format the SD card as. Here are three options: NTFS, FAT32, exFAT. Choose the one you need, click "Start".
Disk Management is a Windows built-in tool that for managing disks on your computer. It also can be used to format storage devices like SD card, pen drive, memory card, etc. Do as following steps.
1>. Right click "This PC" -> "Management" -> "Disk Management".
2>. Here you can see the SD card in the list. Right-click the SD card partition and select "Format".
3>. On the format window, check the box of Perform a quick format,choose a file system and allocation unit size.
If you are familiar with Windows command prompt, you can format SD card on Windows 10 using Diskpart.exe.
1. Type "cmd" in the search box. Right-click on Command Prompt and choose "Run as administrator".
2. In the command prompt, type "diskpart" and press "Enter".
3. Type "list disk" to list all the available drives on your computer and press "Enter".
4. Type "select disk n" ( n refers the disk number of your SD card) to select the SD card you want to format and press “Enter”.
5. Type "clean" to clean the SD card you have selected and press "Enter".
6. Type "create partition primary" to create a partition on the cleaned SD card and press "Enter":
7. Type "format fs=ntfs" (or format fs=exfat) and press "Enter" to format the drive with NTFS or exFAT.
If you want to assign a drive letter to the SD card, you can type "assign letter n:" (for example, assign letter=f:) to assign a drive letter and press "Enter".
The first 3 methods are using Windows native partition tools to finish SD card formatting process. However, if the SD card file system is corrupted, you might fail to format SD card on Windows 10, 8, 7 and get the error messages like Windows was unable to complete the format, or the “diskpart has encountered an error access is denied”. Besides, these methods cannot format an SD card which larger than 32GB into FAT32. In either awkward situation, you can turn to the Method 4.
If you cannot format SD card by the above tools, you can switch to the free partition manager: AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It allows you to (force) format SD card to NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4 on Windows PC. Besides, it can format a large SD card (2TB at most) to FAT32. Besides formatting, it can help you solve other Windows errors such as cannot extend volume to unallocated space, Disk Management all option greyed out; Shrink Volume greyed out, etc.
Free Download AOMEI Partition Assistant.
* AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is free for Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP users. If you are Windows Server, you need to turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant Server Edition.
Step 1. Connect SD card to your Windows 10 computer. Install and launch the program. It will show you the main interface contains all disks on your PC. To format SD card, here you need to right-click the SD card partition, then select "Format Partition" in the pop-up menu.
Step 2. Here you can edit partition label, choose file system and change cluster size for your SD card. Here we choose to format this 128GB SD card to FAT32. Click "OK".
Step 3. Click "Apply" to submit the pending operations.
Compared with Windows File Explorer, Windows Disk Management, and CMD, using this SD card format tool is much easier and simpler. The AOMEI Partition Assistant allows you to format all SD cards, SDHC memory cards, SDXC memory cards to FAT32, exFAT, NTFS according to your needs. By the way, it provides other amazing functions: clone SD card, wipe SD card clean, merge partitions, transfer OS to SSD,etc.