How to fix “memory full” error message and get access to photos on SD card. - jazzwilliam/photographersworld GitHub Wiki
SD cards are great portable storage media and are used widely by everyone. They have a perfect capacity as well as read/write speed to make them the ideal choice for a professional photographer or even household. However, memory cards and SD cards are prone to failure as well as corruption. They are being used a number of times for read/write operations. Sometimes you can see, even if your SD cards storage capacity is not completely full, then also you are not able to store or write any data on it. The moment you try to perform any write operation on it, you just see a message blinking on your screen that “Memory Full” error and you cannot get access to photos on SD card”.
There can be a number of reasons for such kind of message. The reasons can vary from SD card corruption to fake SD memory cards, an over utilised SD memory cards, virus infection/malware etc. Let us figure out what kind of scenario we exactly face during such type of error.
- Your SD is working on camera but not getting access to photos on SD card
- Your SD card shows “memory full” while it is not fully utilised.
Now let us figure out, how to fix “memory full” error message and get access to photos on SD card
1. Use a Third Party Software
If all the above methods fail to solve your purpose, then try to format your SD card. Since formatting removes all data from SD card so you better take a backup of those photos in some another drive if possible. Also, you can use a Photo Recovery Software to get back your lost photos from a formatted SD card if you missed or fail to do a backup. After format, your SD card may get back to working order.
2. Enable the Hidden Photos in Windows
Your SD card may be affected by a virus. Due to the virus infection, all the photos are hidden on your SD card but you can still see the disk space being used. To fix the issue, Go to "Start" -->Run --> and then type cmd.
Let’s suppose your memory card is drive f:
type the following command
attrib -h -r -s /s /d f:*.* All the photos will show again on your removable drive. The next step is to run a good anti-virus or antimalware to remove the virus due to which your photos were hidden, and your memory card was displaying message “memory full”.
3. SD Card Not Showing/Recognised in Windows Explorer
Sometimes SD card is not detected by the PC. First, check to see that the SD card is properly mounted and also verify that the SD card is not write-protected. If all the above things are taken care of then, probably you need to install the right device driver. Sometimes even if the driver is installed, the drivers need to be reinstalled.
Also, cleaning the SD card metal pins, or blowing air onto the SD card slot to remove dust/rust also is a good practice and helps you to avoid such type of errors.Read more about SD card corruption and their fixes here in SD card recovery
4. Try Accessing the Camera photos/videos directly:
Sometimes accessing the photos directly from command prompt solve the issue. It is also observed, that if you connect your card to your system through USB data cable instead of connecting it via the adapter or a card reader, you may get access to your photos on your SD card and also can fix the error message.
Wrapping Up All the above methods are very easy in terms of getting your SD card back to working order. If you have any other suggestions, then please reply to comment.