Before the days whenever a computer on the planet was connected to the internet, the most common way to spread a virus was to infect removable storage media like a floppy disk. Those disks may have long since gone, but there’s one type of removable storage that is still prone to malware — flash storage, most commonly the SD card. Mostly used in digital cameras and for additional storage on smartphones, SD cards are also connected to Mac and PCs to download photos or share other types of files. Sadly, it’s possible to share viruses this way too. And if you find a virus on an SD card that has precious photos on it, the last thing you want to have to do is reformat it and lose your photos. So, here’s how to remove a virus from an SD card without formatting it.
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If you wish to save space in your phone’s internal memory, moving apps to the SD card is an excellent way to free some space. You can move apps to the SD card by going to Settings Applications, selecting the application, then tapping the “Move to SD card” button. You may notice that for some apps, this option is grayed out though.
Place the memory card inside of your card reader. Some smaller memory cards, like microSD cards. How to clean almost any sim card or memory card using just an eraser. This is a great fix for the 'no memory card inserted' when trying to read a card.
Symptoms of a virus on an SD card
There are several ways to tell whether your SD card is infected with a virus. Some of the most common are:
• Files may turn into Windows shortcut links
• Files may become hidden
• Files may be corrupted or have been erased
• The SD card may start to become slow, and it will take longer to copy files to and from the card, or your camera or phone may seem to slow down
• Files are missing
• You get an error message when you try to use the card
• You can’t access the card at all
• You see a pop-up prompt asking you to reformat the card when you plug it into your computer
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All of the above are signs that your card may have a virus. So, before you use it again, you should remove it.
How to manually remove virus from an SD card
If you’re a Mac user, you’ll need to persuade someone who has access to a Windows PC to help you or let you use their computer since this method relies on using the Windows “cmd” command to launch the command-line interface.
1. Put the SD card in the SD slot on the PC or, if it doesn’t have one, use a USB card reader
2. Note the drive letter for the SD card – in this example, we’re going to assume it’s “F,” so wherever you see “F” below, replace it with the drive letter for your SD card
3. Click on Start
4. Choose Run, then type “cmd” and press Enter
5. You should see a new command interface window open
6. Type the following, remembering to replace “F” with the drive letter for your SD card: attrib -h -r -s /s /d f:*.*
7. Press Enter
Once the command has run, it should have removed the virus from the SD card. However, it doesn’t work in all cases. Fortunately, there is one more thing you can try before resorting to reformatting the card.
Another option for removing a virus from an SD card
If the manual method described doesn’t work, there are a couple of other options. The first is to manually copy as many of your photos and other files from the SD card as you can. Once you’ve done that, you can reformat the card. Here’s how to do that on a Mac:
1. Go to Applications, then Utilities, and double-click Disk Utility to launch it
2. Click on the SD card (not the volume underneath) in the sidebar
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3. Choose the Erase tab
4. Type in a name for the card
5. Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” as the format
6. Choose GUID Partition Map as the scheme
7. Press Erase
To reformat an SD card on a Windows PC, do the following:
1. Click on the Start menu and then choose the folder icon (above the cog on the left side of the screen) to open File Explorer
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2. Choose This PC
3. Click on the name of your SD card
4. Select the Manage tab at the top of the window
5. Press Format
6. Click on the menu under “File System” and choose exFAT
7. Type a name into the “Volume label” box
8. Press Start and then Ok
The SD card will now be erased and re-formatted. The virus will be gone, but so will all your data. So if there’s anything you weren’t able to copy to your computer before you reformatted, you’ll need to try and recover it.
The best way to recover data from an SD card is to use specialist recovery software. There are many tools available, including some that are specifically designed to recover photos from an SD card. Research which is the best one for your needs and find out whether you can try it for free to see if it finds any recoverable data before you pay for the software so you can recover it.
If you think the virus on your SD card may have been transferred to your computer, you should scan the computer using antivirus software. Several antivirus tools are available for Mac and PC, some of which will allow you to both scan and remove malware for free. An alternative, if you’re using a Mac, is to use the malware utility in CleanMyMac X. This tool scans your Mac at the click of a button and either returns a clean bill of health or allows you to remove any malware it finds at the click of a button. You can download CleanMyMac X for free here.
Finding a virus on an SD card doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to reformat it — though you should copy your most precious photos from it as a precaution. It is possible to remove the virus without reformatting it. However, if you do have to wipe the SD card completely to get rid of the virus, running a data recovery tool specially designed for flash storage media might allow you to recover your data.
Isn’t it frustrating when your camera gets sluggish after you put the memory card back in? Or when you connect the card to a Windows computer after your Mac, and have to browse through odd-looking files like Spotlight-V100?
Both of these problems are caused by the service files OS X writes onto your memory card when you work with it on a Mac. Normally, when you ask someone how to clean an SD card, the answer you get is “just format it”. But what if formatting the SD card is not an option, because you only want those junk files gone, not everything you’ve got there? Well, looks like you’re going to need an SD card cleaner (we recommend CleanMyDrive 2, it’s free and works with all kinds of external drives).
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In this post, we’ll show you how to clear SD card junk with a cleaner app, so that you don’t have to format your SD card. But first, let’s figure out what these troublemaker files on your card are.
What’s there to clean on an SD card?
After connecting your card to a Mac, you may have noticed some of these files on it:
- .DS_Store
- .Spotlight-V100
- .TemporaryItems
- .fseventsd
What are they? These are files the OS X creates as it works with your SD card, for various purposes. .DS_Store, for example, stores different folder data for the Finder, like how the icons are positioned. .fseventsd is a log file the system writes when files are deleted or modified. So, at some point they were useful to your Mac, but not anymore — and they are certainly useless to you. Even worse: they can corrupt your memory card’s performance and cause your camera to lag.
But the most annoying thing about these files is that they are hard to get rid of manually. Formatting the SD card helps, but if you don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater and delete your own files along with the junk — an SD cleaner app is the way out.
How to remove junk files with an SD card cleaner
External storage cleaner apps for Mac are not as common as they should be (someone please do something about that). But fortunately, we’ve got a free app that is tremendously helpful for SD cards and other types of external drives — CleanMyDrive 2. Here’s how you clean all the pesky junk files with it:
- Install CleanMyDrive 2 (it will settle in your menu bar for easy access).
- Click on the CleanMyDrive 2 icon in your menu bar. You’ll see all connected drives, including your SD card.
- Hit the Clean button next to your card.
Done. This will clear SD card junk and make the card run like new again. Even better: you can set the SD cleaner to remove junk automatically upon eject. To set up automatic cleanups, do the following:
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- Open CleanMyDrive 2.
- Click on the little round icon next to your SD card.
- Enable Automatic cleanup.
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That’s it. From now on, CleanMyDrive 2 will wipe out OS X service files every time you eject the SD card. You can forget about annoying .DS_Stores on your memory card, or the laggy camera after you’ve transferred pics onto your Mac. Get CleanMyDrive 2 for free and see how much an SD card cleaner can help. Seriously, it’s more useful that we’re telling you.