Hardware (Severely) Corrupted SD card after BitLocker failure.

[Duo8]

So for no good reason I tried enabling BitLocker on my 4GB mSD card. It ran for a min or so then suddenly showed something like "The data on the drive was changed". I clicked Cancel. After that, the drive seems to be unformatted. But when I tried to format it, Windows told me that the SD's size is 13MB. And it couldn't format the SD anyway.

So far I've tried the default formatter, SD Formatter, a partioning tool and win32disk imager (shows a bunch of data in HexEdit). But I still couldn't bring back the full 4GB capacity.

Are there anyway to properly format this drive? The data isn't important, I just want the full capacity back.

 

[npbg6464]

I've never heard of SD cards changing physical capacity. Can you post a screenshot from windows disk manager? Right-click Computer > Manage > Disk management.
If it's just a corrupted partition table, all you need to do is wipe the card's first physical sector.
Also try reading the card on a different machine or under a different OS (older windows or linux). I'm not sure how bitlocker works, but it might be loading a driver that abstracts from accessing raw sectors on the card.

 

[Duo8]

I've never heard of SD cards changing physical capacity. Can you post a screenshot from windows disk manager? Right-click Computer > Manage > Disk management.
If it's just a corrupted partition table, all you need to do is wipe the card's first physical sector.
Also try reading the card on a different machine or under a different OS (older windows or linux). I'm not sure how bitlocker works, but it might be loading a driver that abstracts from accessing raw sectors on the card.

Here:

I'm gonna install a Linux distro soon soI'll see if it'll make any difference.

 

[npbg6464]

Yeah, definitely try reading it under another OS without bitlocker. You can also try checking it with a tool like HDAT2 (requires booting from USB key). AFAIK, there's no standard for modifying an sd card's reported sector count.

 

[Duo8]

I haven't installed a distro yet but I tried viewing the card in GParted. It shows 12.9 MB of unallocated space, couldn't format it, and told me that it "couldn't read disk label" IIRC.

 

[Mariko]

So for no good reason I tried enabling BitLocker on my 4GB mSD card. It ran for a min or so then suddenly showed something like "The data on the drive was changed". I clicked Cancel. After that, the drive seems to be unformatted. But when I tried to format it, Windows told me that the SD's size is 13MB. And it couldn't format the SD anyway.

Try the command line DISKPART tool. The commands you need to use are [disregard the parenthesis, obviously]:

DISKPART
list disk (you'll get a list, from which you need to choose your SD card)
select disk X (where X is the number corresponding to your SD card)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=FAT32 QUICK (unless you want it to use NTFS or something else)
assign
exit (exits the CMD window)

I know you have already tried partitioning software, but give this a go. Some HEX editors allow you to zero-fill drives and removable media. After doing so, you should be able to do a clean format as well.

 

[trumpet-205]

You have to initialize the SD card, this'll reset MBR/GPT.

 

[npbg6464]

According to the OP it's not a case of MBR corruption, the card is actually misreporting its sector count.

I haven't installed a distro yet but I tried viewing the card in GParted. It shows 12.9 MB of unallocated space, couldn't format it, and told me that it "couldn't read disk label" IIRC.

You booted from a live CD or usb key, correct? Try checking it on a different computer and using a different card reader.

 

[Duo8]

Partitioning tools didn't work. Not even DISKPART. Apparently they can't write to the card.

According to the OP it's not a case of MBR corruption, the card is actually misreporting its sector count.


You booted from a live CD or usb key, correct? Try checking it on a different computer and using a different card reader.

I don't have another PC but I've tried 3 different readers. All 3 gave me the same result.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

I've never heard of SD cards changing physical capacity.

Odd, because this happens all the time when SD cards start to die out/they become corrupted (either because of shoddy readers or other damage).


@OP, download GParted and either USB boot or CD boot it. If GParted can't format it, it's likely the SD card is dead or dying.

 

[npbg6464]

Odd, because this happens all the time when SD cards start to die out/they become corrupted (either because of shoddy readers or other damage).

I meant that AFAIK there's no standard software for changing an SD card's reported sector count. Manufacturers can do it using proprietary commands but common software like Bitlocker shouldn't be capable of that.

OP, if you booted into GParted from a liveCD or USB and tried another card reader and still get the same result, it's like Tom said - your card is probably dying.