SD card Not Showing Full Size – Restore SD Card to Full Capacity

When an SD card shows wrong size, it is usually because of logical errors, compatibility issues, or technical errors. Some can be fixed by basic troubleshooting and verifying the support.

If you have bought the SD card new and it does not have the same storage space as claimed, it might also be that the product is not genuine. Here are a few other important reasons why an SD card might not be showing full capacity.

Why is my SD Card not Showing Full Capacity?

Usually, it happens because of three main reasons:

• Virus infection
• Cheap or faulty SD card
• SD card is not compatible with the card reader.

This error often occurs with large-capacity SDHC or SDXC cards, which can exceed 250 GB. If the card reader or device doesn’t support such high capacities, the device may create a smaller partition. Bad Sectors are damaged storage sectors that don’t respond to read or write commands. It also leads to the memory card not storing new data.

A virus attack can corrupt the Master Boot Record (MBR), which acts like an index for the storage drive, causing the memory card to show reduced capacity.

ALSO: When the SD card says empty, even though it is not.

Best Time to Restore the SD Card to its Full Capacity?

You can fix the SD Card showing the wrong size issue, but this involves formatting SD card. Well, in such instances, the perfect choice would be to let the best SD card recovery software help.

Remo Recover can restore files from SD cards and other storage drives in a few simple clicks on Windows 11/10 PC.

Restore SD card capacity from micro SD card, SDHC, and SDXC from commonly used file systems like NTFS, ExFAT, and others.

The Remo supports all sorts of data, and it even recovers videos from a formatted SD card.

How to Restore My SD Card to Full Capacity?

Once performing the corrupted memory card recovery on the PC, you can now format the SD card to reclaim its full capacity for saving data again. So here you’ll find the two most recommended free methods to format and restore SD cards to full capacity.

Expand the Unallocated space

Use the unused space on your SD card that hasn’t been assigned to a volume. Use these steps to expand the SD card size that shows less capacity.

• Open Disk management
• Right-click on the functional volume on your SD card and choose Extend Volume.

• Click on Next.

• Select the size to extend the volume in MB (Default selects all available space) and click Next.

• Click on Finish.

Now check if the SD is choosing its full storage capacity.

Use DiskPart Command to Restore SD Card to Full Capacity

Let’s see how to use the DiskPart command to clear and restore capacity on the SD card now:

• First of all, get your SD card attached to the PC
• Right-click Start and select Command Prompt (Admin)
• Sign in as administrator and type: diskpart to bring up DiskPart
• Type: list disk and hit Enter
• Then type: select disk 1 (replace 1 with the disk number of your SD card and hit Enter)
• Type: clean and hit Enter
• Then type create partition primary to create a partition on the cleaned SD card and hit ENTER

• Type format fs=ntfs or format fs=exfat and hit ENTER to format the drive with NTFS or exFAT
• Type assign letter=drive letter (Assign a letter to the drive)
• Type: exit and hit Enter

Here, one thing to be noticed is that the DiskPart CMD command will help you clean the whole SD card, but you do need to recreate a new partition to make the SD card available for saving files again. So, you can use the Disk Management tool in Windows 10 or other Windows PCs to create a new partition.

Be careful while recreating a new partition in an SD card. Even a small ignorance can lead to a corruption of the partition map of the SD card, which in turn can result in severe data loss.  

To fully format and reclaim the full capacity of the SD card, follow the steps:

• Right-click This PC/My Computer > Manage
• Select Disk Management under Device Manager, find and right-click on SD card, and select Format Volume

• Rename and reset the file system of the SD card to NTFS or FAT32 as you need, follow the on-screen guidelines to complete the format process

Restore SD Card to Full Capacity on Mac:

Here are a few steps to reset SD to full capacity on Mac

• Open the Disk Utility app
• Select your SD card and click on Erase option
• Choose the file system and click on Erase

You may selectively follow any one method to get your SD card back to work normally again. However, remember to first recover the data from the memory card. As even though you’ll regain the full capacity of your SD card and will be able to use it for storing and saving files again then, formatting will cause data loss if you haven’t backed up your files.

“If you are a victim of SD card format and looking to recover formatted SD card data, then it is recommended to use Remo Recover.”

Conclusion

This article explains why high-capacity SDHC and SDXC cards may show less storage due to file system corruption, incompatible card readers, or viruses/malware. Using the diskpart command or formatting the card can fix the issue, but this may risk losing your valuable files.

Before attempting any methods to fix the issue, make sure to recover all the files on the SD card using Remo Recover.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Author: John Harris

With a decade of experience in data recovery, John Harris, Senior Editor at Remo Software, is your go-to specialist. His focus includes partition management, Windows solutions, and data troubleshooting, delivering insightful content that serves both users and search engines. John's expertise shines through in illuminating blog posts, untangling data loss intricacies across diverse storage platforms.…