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A few days ago, I experimented some strange issues with my Lumia 640XL. The Windows Phone Store app started to display error messages when trying update any app, and the pictures received from Whatsapp and Telegram only could be seen in preview mode.

After lose a couple of videos I tried to record, I decided to perform a hard reset of the device. Previously, I extracted the micro-SD card and copied all its contents to my PC's hard disk.

When finished the hard reset configuration phase, the phone was still unable to reinstall all the apps. I extracted the micro-SD again, with the intention of erase the WPSystem folder, but it wasn't possible. The card seems to be readonly protected.

I tried to manipulate the card in a Windows 10 system, in a Windows 7 and in Lubuntu 14.04. I used diferent adaptors, USB, SD...: in all systems the card is shown as readonly filesystem. Neither Linux gparted nor Windows diskpart were able to change this condition.

Any idea of how proceed with this without reformating the card? It is possible the card is fatally damaged or it could be only a problem of corrupted data?

The card is a Lexar 128Gb SDXC, exFAT formatted.

Thanks.

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  • It's definitely possible that the card is damaged beyond repair. SD cards do have a somewhat limited lifespan, and yours may well have reached the end of its. But why don't you want to reformat the card? You said you had previously copied all its contents to your PC, so there should be nothing to lose, right? You can use the SD Association's SD Formatter utility; I've seen recommendations to use this, rather than the OS built-in formatting feature, for troubleshooting. – Indrek♦ Sep 12 '16 at 6:20
  • I'm afraid you are right. I tried to format the card, using the SD Formatter and it still appears as write protected. – T.A. Otero Lojo Sep 13 '16 at 14:04
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The card cannot be recovered.

Every Micro SD card has a flash memory controller built into it. The controllers might force the micro SD card into a read only state when multiple write errors occur. Such readonly states are permanent cannot be overwritten. My micro SD got into the same problem and it will not get formatted using Diskpart or GParted or any other software.

While it is technically possible I don't have any conclusive proof that SD cards do this. I have just read about it.

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