Help! My MicroSD Card Shows as RAW – What Can I Do?

I recommend using the SD Card Formatter from the SD Association. It has saved many corrupted cards for me when nothing else worked. Plus, it's free! You could also try using Command Prompt as an Admin and run:

diskpart

list disk

select disk X (for your card)

clean

format X: /fs:exfat

This should work; it's similar to what the SD Card Formatter does. You can also try running chkdsk to check for bad sectors, though it usually marks them so they aren’t used after formatting.

If you're serious about recovering data, unplugging the card immediately and sending it to professionals might be your best bet. Depending on the issue, just trying to read it might lead to more data loss. As for MiniTool, I've not used it, but a 20-hour scan for 16GB does seem excessively slow. This could indicate that your card is failing and that the software is struggling to read it. You might want to check your Task Manager for any read speed or disk activity information to see what's going on.

Have you tried a different reader or another card? The issue might be the card or the reader itself. MicroSD cards can be quite unreliable, so it's best not to store irreplaceable files on them without backups. If you don't need the data, just get a new one; they are super cheap now! You can grab a decent 128GB MicroSD for less than $15.

Sometimes the issue is with the reader itself. Make sure to try a good USB reader as a test!

A different card reader might solve the problem too! A 16 GB card usually costs just a few bucks, so it might just be easier to replace it rather than spend more time trying to fix it.