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I formatted my SD card to install the Raspbian Jessie, using Etcher, but it gave me several errors, and after that my Mac, or Windows, laptop is not detecting the card at all.

Screenshot of SD card error What can I do with it?

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    You can try using win32 disk imager (PC) or dd (Mac & Linux) to burn the image to your card. What do you mean by "my Mac or Windows laptop is not detecting the card at all"? Your PC will only recognize a small FAT partition, not the entire card, and I believe the same is true on a Mac. On your Pc does it show up in Disk Manager?
    – Steve Robillard
    Jun 8, 2017 at 7:42
  • Before formatting, I was able to see the content. Now when I click, it says "Please Insert a disk into USB Drive". Yes, I can see it under Disk Management but when I click on the properties, I see zero capacity.
    – Pras4
    Jun 8, 2017 at 8:18
  • @Steve - Added the screenshot, please help.
    – Pras4
    Jun 8, 2017 at 8:41
  • You didn't answer my question about disk management? If it shows up there you may be able to reformat the disk and start again.
    – Steve Robillard
    Jun 8, 2017 at 9:07
  • Also when using drive formatting/partitioning tools - be damn sure you are working on the device you think you are working on! Whilst, as a GNU/Linux user I do not mind when someone formats over their Windows system drive too much ( 8-] ) it can really ruin ruin your day to find you have trashed your PCs Operating System rather than the contents of a misbehaving SD Card plugged into a reader...!
    – SlySven
    Jun 15, 2017 at 1:50

5 Answers 5

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When you install Raspbian on an SD CARD, it creates two partitions :

A FAT16 partition and an EXT4 partition

Normally you should be able to see the FAT16 partition so I guess the card is a bit damaged

You can use a third party software to format your SD card like AOMEI Partition Assistant Download here on Windows or GPARTED on a Linux Distrubution

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  • Thank you, buddy, tried it but looks like my SD card is damaged. :/
    – Pras4
    Jun 9, 2017 at 3:03
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Seems like its a windows,

and you should format the card before you go. here is the hard one (hard formatting)

so; start menu > run > diskpart > list disk

console show you disks available on your pc generally disk 0 is local disks (C:,D: etc) and disk 1 points to others like usb flash disk sd card vs

continue with comands

select disk 1 > list disk > clean > create partition primary > assign letter g:

I recommend to you to list disk again before clean command to check disk 1 is selected (you can see the exact sizes on list so you can understand which one is your sd card and which should be selected) so you have done with the cleaning stuff and assigned the card as g: as a virtual drive you can chose any letters that does not stands for any other virtual drive

finally;

format fs=ntfs

ntfs can be eighter fat32 etc.

to summerize completely you need this commands in order;

start menu > run > diskpart > list disk > select disk 1 > list disk > clean > create partition primary > assign letter g: > format fs=ntfs

it takes nearly 20 mins to ntfs format 16gb micro-sd card for my raspberry pi 3

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  • Thank you, buddy, tried it but looks like my SD card is damaged. :/
    – Pras4
    Jun 9, 2017 at 3:03
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This might seem a little nieve, but I just inserted my unusable SD card into my digital camera, and it seemed to reformat it to a condition where I could proceed with another partitioning. You also might want to use the minipartion disk tool on windows or the SD card formatter (https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/index.html) to just put one big FAt32 partiton on the card before other Linux partitioning. Good luck.

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    The OP stated on every comment that it's SD Card is broken.
    – Ingo
    Feb 9, 2019 at 11:34
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  1. Boot any Linux Live distro that has GParted.

  2. Delete SD partition-table. For Pete's sake be 100% sure you are working on the SD-card and not your HDD or SSD

  3. Use dd to overwrite the first 25 MBs of your card (not card partitions) with data from:

    /dev/urandom

And be 100% sure your dd is done to, and from, the right devices. If not, you could kill your Windows OS, or even harm your computer.

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  • The OP stated on every comment that it's SD Card is broken. B.t.w. using /dev/random takes a very long time to gather random numbers on a RasPi. You can use /dev/urandom or better /dev/zero for just cleaning up the storage.
    – Ingo
    Feb 9, 2019 at 11:34
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    Well.. Who knows? I've repaired "broken" cards several times simply by destroying partition tables ++ with random data... I never said he should use the PIs random data generator...
    – svin83
    Feb 11, 2019 at 22:22
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check in file explorer with which letter (that C:// or D://, don't know what it's called) it starts and make sure windows recognizes it. and you need not format the card as it has binary junk because the OS is only installed on it. OS installation removes the formatting.

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  • The question states that the card doesn't appear in Explorer, therefore it isn't possible to check C: or D:.
    – Chenmunka
    Jul 2, 2021 at 9:08

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