Before starting the troubleshooting process, ensure that your phone supports the capacity of the SD card. A phone that supports 32 GB will display the blank or unsupported issue if a 64 GB card is inserted into the phone. Moreover, if your SD card was encrypted before the issue occurred, then its chances of recovery are minimal, and it would be better to use a professional data recovery service.
1. Restart your device.
Your device will show an SD card as blank or unsupported if the storage modules of the OS are not fully functional after an update. This happens more often than you think. Here, restarting your device will do the trick.
2. Clean the SD card and its slot.
If rust, debris, or dust on the SD card connections prevents a proper connection from being established, it will result in this error message. This can be fixed by cleaning the SD card and the device’s slot.
3. Try using the SD Card Data Recovery on another device.
Your SD card will appear as unsupported if the device in use is not compatible with the card. This can occur after an OS update or due to hardware issues with the device. Here, trying the SD card on another device will confirm the scenario and help resolve the issue. If you want to attempt recovery after formatting the card, then format the card first and retry the recovery; however, you will risk losing your data permanently.
On another mobile device.
If you have a spare SD card, check whether that card works correctly in the problematic phone.
On a PC
Use a data recovery app.
If your PC cannot recover the data from the SD card, it is time to try a data recovery app. You may use any app of your choice, but TestDisk (free) and GetDataBack (paid) are reported to recover data from a blank or unsupported SD card. You may try these apps at your own risk. We are referring to them only in good faith and for educational purposes. General guidelines for recovering data using a data recovery app are as follows:
4. Repair the SD Card by Formatting it on a PC.
The SD card may become blank or unsupported if it has bad sectors or if its file system contains errors. This could have occurred when the card was removed without proper unmounting or after an OS update. In this case, repairing the SD card by formatting it on a PC will solve the problem. If Window’s default repair mechanism didn’t work, you can move forward and install Minitool Partition Wizard.
5. Format the SD card using the FAT32 format.
If the data tables on your SD card are no longer valid or the card is formatted in an incompatible format (such as NTFS), then you will encounter a blank or unsupported problem. To fix this, format the SD card in the FAT32 format.
On a mobile phone.
If the problematic phone fails to format the card, you can try formatting the card on another phone.
On a Windows PC.
If this doesn’t work, we can try renaming the drive letter. This refreshes the path of the SD card and it might solve the problem. If that does not work, check whether formatting the card with Diskpart solves the problem.
Use an app.
If your mobile device or PC is failing to format the card, let’s try an SD card app. You may try any app, but SD Formatter has been reported to format cards that cannot be formatted otherwise. If not, the card is most likely faulty. You may have the card replaced if it is under warranty or purchase a new one. However, prior to that, ensure that another card works properly in your phone. Otherwise, the phone’s SD card slot might be faulty and require replacement. If you have recently flashed a custom ROM on your device, check whether reverting to the stock ROM solves the problem. Lastly, a piece of advice: it is always good to back up your data, especially on memory cards, as these cards are prone to failure.
