How to Update your SD Card Reader Driver

Have you ever been rummaging through a drawer and come across something you hadn’t seen for a while?

Imagine that it’s an SD card. You may not immediately remember what was in it. You might hold it in your hand and wonder if it contains important documents, music files, or vacation photos from two years ago.

In any case, you will likely want to investigate what that tiny square holds.

Why Is My SD Card Not Showing up?

You slip the card into its slot, anticipating what it could possibly contain ­– and Windows doesn’t seem to recognize it. It’s at this point that you’ll likely ask yourself “how do I fix an SD card that is not displayed?”

There are a few possibilities, but one suspect tends to have its fair share of being the culprit.

A Usual Suspect Is Device Drivers

You’ll want to start with one of the most common reasons a device on your computer will stop working – or no longer work as expected.
A device driver is basically software that tells your hardware how to interact with the operating system (in this case, Windows 10). The behavior of these drivers can be altered by changes in the environment or they may simply become corrupt.
Either way, they will require updating. There are more ways than one of doing this.

Let Windows Try and Find a New Driver

Over the years, Windows has continued to add built-in tools and features to make your life easier. Some are more useful than others.
You can give the operating system a shot at finding and installing the driver. If this was a sure bet, you wouldn’t need to read further regarding the other options. That said, it isn’t. Still, it doesn’t hurt to give it a try.

To do so, search for Device Manager via the search box on the taskbar. Once you click on it, you’ll see a list of devices. Find your SD card, right-click on it and choose to Update driver.

You’ll see two options. Choose the one that allows to automatically search for the driver. It won’t take too long to learn if Windows was able to find another driver.

Manually Install an Updated Driver

If the above actions do not produce optimal results, you can still search for the driver yourself. Typically, this involves knowing the exact model of your device. Once you do, you can go to the manufacturer’s website, find the driver and download it.

After downloading (and unzipping) the driver, you can go back into the Device Manager and choose to update the device – except this time, you’ll choose to browse for the recently acquired update yourself.

Automate the Task of Installing Drivers

Another option would be to allow software, such as Driver Support, to locate and install the drivers for you. This path would alleviate the burden of having to seek out and update drivers every time a device needed it – not just in this scenario.

Other Items to Check

Hopefully, the prior steps fixed the issue. Still, if you find yourself asking “How do I get Windows 10 to recognize my SD card?”, there are still some items you can check.

Verify the Drive Appears in Windows
Even if Windows doesn’t seem to detect the device, you can still do a sanity check. From the search box on the taskbar, type Storage and click on the first item that appears.

Verify that the SD card shows up and has been assigned a drive letter. You can click on it to verify that it’s accessible.

If it is, you can continue to drill down into the different areas of the storage device and verify that the individual files can be retrieved.

Physically Check the SD Card

This option is more or less an assessment to see if there are any obvious issues with the card. One problem could be the gold connectors on the card might have some foreign substance – dried liquid, dirt and so on – that may be impeding it from being read.
You can wipe it off with a soft cloth if this happens to be the case.

Test the SD Card in Another Computer
Trying the storage card in another computer doesn’t have to be the last thing you try (you could’ve done this first). Either way, it’s an option. If it works, you know there is something on the local machine prohibiting from being used.
Otherwise, the SD card might’ve simply had better days.

Keep Your Devices Running Smoothly
As mentioned before, a typical culprit is the device drivers. You can avoid issues by ensuring they’re always kept current.

Driver Support software will inventory your computer for supported devices. Upon registration of the service, it will update any drivers that are missing or require updating. You can avoid the hassles involved with keeping devices current – and instead investigate what’s on that SD card.
Since 1996, Driver Support has been providing services that keep device drivers up to date. Give DriverSupport | ONE a try today! to get started and simplify this process for you.