What to do if your SD card is not detected by your Huawei Mate 10 Pro smartphone (easy steps)
The Huawei Mate 10 Pro has expandable memory through microSD card types. Contrary to what initial reviews had claimed that this phone does not have a memory card support, it actually does. The thing is, it only has a single card slot for both the SIM card and the memory card. The first slot is for the SIM card and the second slot (SIM slot 2) is for the memory card (microSD card). The Mate 10 Pro microSD card support is up to 256 GB, good enough space for heavy app users. There many possible reasons as to why a device won’t be able to read or detect an SD card. The SD card might be damaged, corrupted, or not formatted properly. In worst cases, the phone may not be able to detect the SD card due to hardware failure/damage. Mapped below this page are suggested workarounds to deal with SD card detection errors and failures on a Huawei Mate 10 Pro smartphone. Read on to find out what options to try on should you too bump into the same issue while attempting to use an SD card on the same device.
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How to troubleshoot Huawei Mate 10 Pro that can’t detect SD card
Before you troubleshoot your device software, verify and ensure that your SD card is compatible with or supported by the Huawei Mate 10 Pro device. Proceed if the SD card is compatible but still not detected. Here are your options.
First solution: Reboot your phone (soft reset).
Minor software glitches that might have caused your device to stop reading the SD card can be easily resolved by a soft reset or device restart. Here’s how:
- Press the Power button for a few seconds until the menu options appear.
- Select Power Off option then tap OK.
- After 30 seconds, press and hold the Power button until the device restarts.
A soft reset does not affect any data stored on the phone’s internal memory, so no need for backups.
Second solution: Unmount then mount the SD card.
Errors like this can also occur when the SD card gets corrupted or if not, damaged. In this case, try to remove and reseat the SD card on your phone. To prevent damaging the card, you have to unmount the SD card before removing it from your device.
To unmount the SD card on your Huawei Mate 10 Pro, go to Settings-> Storage-> SD card-> then select the option to Unmount.
After unmounting the SD card, you can remove it safely from your phone. To remove the SD card, use the SIM eject tool that comes with your phone. Then follow the reset of these steps:
- Insert the tool into the tiny slot provided in the SIM card tray.
- Put a little pressure to push and pop the tray out.
- Remove and examine the SD card for any visible signs of damage or scratches.
- If everything looks good, place the SD card back into the SIM slot 2 in the same orientation (gold contacts faced downwards) before you removed it. Also secure the SIM card in its slot.
Turn on your device after securing the card slot and wait until it completely boots up to the Home screen.
If necessary, mount the SD card by going to Settings-> Storage-> SD card-> then choose Mount.
Then try to access the SD card storage and see if your device is now able to read it.
Third solution: Format the SD card.
If none of the prior methods worked and your Huawei Mate 10 Pro still cannot detect your SD card, then you should consider formatting the SD card. This will erase all files and data including corrupted contents from the SD card, and therefore results to data loss. On the positive note, your SD card would become optimized and same as new.
SD card formatting can be done on either the phone or through a computer. To format the SD card on the phone, it has to be recognized or read by the phone first. But since your device cannot detect the SD card, formatting the card on a computer would be your option. To get this done, you will need to secure a computer that supports the same SD card type as the one you’ve got for your phone.
To format an SD card on a Windows PC or Mac computer, you can download and install an SD Formatter or relevant tools for formatting SD, SDHC, and SDXC cards. Or you can format SD card with the built-in tools on your computer’s operating system. To format using an SD card formatting tool, just insert the SD card into the provided card slot on your computer and then open the SD card formatting tool. Wait until your SD card is recognized and then specify the format option you want to use. Follow the rest of the onscreen instructions to finish the SD card formatting on your computer. If necessary, adjust the formatting options by setting a few basic formatting options. Instead of using the defaults, you may try switching the Format Type option to Full (Overwrite), to delete everything including old data from the SD card.
To format your SD card using the built-in formatting function on a Windows PC, follow these steps:
- Open the Windows Explorer.
- Find the drive letter for your SD card like D:\, E:\, etc.
- Right click on the SD card drive.
- Then click Format from the menu options. Doing so will launch the Format screen.
- Select file system defaults to FAT32 for smaller SD cards while exFAT for larger cards from 64GB and up.
- Enter a name or Volume Label for your card if you want.
- The click the Start button to begin formatting.
- Read and review the warning message then click OK to confirm.
To format your SD card on a Mac OS X computer, follow these steps:
- Insert your micro SD card into the SD card adapter that came with the card.
- Connect your micro SD card adapter to your computer using an external card reader.
- Save all your SD card files to your computer, for backup purposes.
- Open Disk Utility by clicking on the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of the screen then type disk utility in the search box.
- Find your micro SD card in the left side of the screen. It’s usually labeled with No Name or Untitled.
- Click the Erase tab on the center of the screen.
- Click the dropdown then select Format from the menu options.
- Select MS-DOS (FAT) if you’re using smaller SD card like 32GB. Otherwise, select ExFAT if it is 64GB and above.
- Read the warning message then click Erase to confirm.
Your computer will then delete all contents from your SD card and format it as new.
Other options
Wipe cache partition on your device. Wiping the cache partition is recommended if your phone suddenly failed to read the SD card after installing a new firmware update. Doing so will clear all temporary data including those that get corrupted after implementing a new firmware version on your device. This process won’t affect any data stored on the internal memory, therefore won’t result to data loss.
Master reset/factory data reset. If wiping the cache partition still failed to fix the problem, then you may have to consider opting for a full system reset. This will wipe everything from your phone’s internal memory including any bugs and malware that might have caused you this trouble. Should you wish to proceed, be sure to back up all your critical data for safekeeping. You can carry out a master reset through your device settings or via recovery mode.
If your Huawei Mate 10 Pro still cannot read your SD card, then try inserting the SD card on your other compatible devices. If your other device detects or reads the SD card, then your Huawei Mate 10 Pro is not compatible with or does not support the type of SD card you have. In that case, try contacting Huawei Support for more information and recommendations on which SD card type to use on your device.
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