6 Tips to Fix SD Card Slow Transfer Speed on Windows

Are your SD cards, USB or external hard drives becoming slower while transferring files to PC or backing up data from computer to your external device? Here this page will guide you to effectively speed up and make your SD card, memory card, USB and external hard drive faster for data transferring on Windows 10/8/7, etc. PCs and laptops.

"Hi Guys, I have just bought a Toshiba UHS3 128GB Micro SD Card. At the moment, I am getting poor speeds using the SD card on my PC, with a read of 35.74MB and a write of 10.72MB. This is a card that is supposed to have read speeds up to 90MB/s. I hope that I will get a lot faster than the speeds I am getting on the PC. Am I unrealistic, or could there be an issue with my tablet? Would a factory reset help anything?"

How to Fix Slow SD Card with 6 Solutions

Have you ever encountered a problem where the SD card, USB, or even external hard drive gets slower and slower after being used for a long time? When external storage gets full, it may also slow down the data or file transferring speed on a Windows PC. If you are having such a problem or need a speed up your SD card transfer speed, follow the tips below to resolve this issue:

Fix 1. Change Card Reader to Speed Up SD Card

A memory card reader is a device for accessing the data on a memory card such as a CompactFlash (CF), Secure Digital (SD), or MultiMediaCard (MMC). Most card readers also offer to write capability, and together with the card, this can function as a pen drive. If you have the right SD card reader, you can gain:

• Full speed read/write for high performance
• High-speed backup of high-resolution images and 4K videos
• Built-in USB-A port for cable-free PC connection

This is the simplest way that may help speed up your SD card. Click the buttons below and let more people know about it.

Fix 2. Convert SD Card from FAT32 to NTFS

Another way to fix a slow SD card is by converting FAT32 to NTFS without losing data. A FAT file system is often used in removable storage devices, such as digital cameras, Smart TVs, and other portable devices. But it has many limitations:

• FAT32 only supports files of up to 4GB in size and volumes of up to 2TB in size
• FAT32 isn't a journaling file system, which means corruption can happen more easily
• FAT32 doesn't support file permissions

While NTFS supports very large files, restores consistency by using a log file and checkpoint information, supports file compression when running out of disk space. You can convert FAT 32 to NTFS with the help of EaseUS Partition Master Free. This free tool allows you to convert the drive from FAT32 to NTFS without formatting directly.

Step 1. Install and launch EaseUS Partition Master on your computer.

Step 2. On Partition Manager, right-click on a FAT32 partition and click "Advanced", select "NTFS to FAT".

Step 3. Click "Proceed" on the pop-up dialog box to continue.

Step 4. Click "Apply" to start the converting process. Wait until the operation process is finished.

If your SD card speed gets improved with the provided method here, don't forget to share this method online. This will help your friends improve their SD card transfer speed by switching the file system format:

Fix 3. Format SD Card from FAT32 to NTFS

If your SD card is still slow, you can format it to NTFS in Disk Management. 

Step 1. Right-click This PC or My Computer, and select "Manage".

Step 2. Enter Device Manager and click "Disk Management"

Step 3. Open Disk Management and right-click the SD card, select "Format".

Step 4. Set "NTFS" for the selected device, tick "Quick Format" and click "OK" to confirm.

 

Click the link below to learn why your SD card becomes slow.

Fix 4. Update SD Card Drivers If SD Is Slow

To speed up SD card transfer or write speed, you can update SD card drivers. Here are the steps to make it.

Step 1. Connect the SD card to the PC

Step 2. Navigate Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager -> Disk drivers.

Step 3. Find and right-click the SD card. Choose "Uninstall" and then choose "Scan for hardware changes" to refresh the drivers.

You can update your SD card drivers in this way.

Fix 5. Optimize SD Performance to Fix Slow Micro SD Card

After updating the SD card driver, you can follow this method here to optimize SD card performance by changing settings so to increase the data transferring speed with the following tips:

Step 1. Right-click on SD and select Properties.

Step 2. Go to the Hardware tab and select your SD card, then click Properties.

Step 3. Click Change settings on Generic-Multi-Card USB Device Properties.

Step 4. Go to the Policies tab on the settings interface and select Better Performance under the Removal policy.

Step 5. Then click OK to confirm the operation and click OK to keep all changes.

Step 6. Finally, restart your computer to save all changes.

Besides all the above steps, you can also try to wipe data on the SD card for a faster data transferring speed with the help of EaseUS Partition Master Free.

If you love this manual method, remember to share it online to your Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin so to help more people out there and get a faster SD card:

Fix 6. Clean Up SD Card Junk Files to Make It Faster

If you still want to make your SD card faster, you can clean up junk files with easy steps.

Step 1. DOWNLOAD and install EaseUS Partition Master for free and launch it on your Windows PC.

On the suite, hover your mouse on "PC Cleaner", click the Download icon to install and launch EaseUS CleanGenius.

Step 2. On EaseUS CleanGenius, select "Cleanup" on the main screen, and click "Scan" to start scanning.

Step 3. When the scanning process completes, select useless large files and click "Clean" to clean large files.

Step 4. When EaseUS CleanGenius completes cleaning the files you choose, click "Done" to finish the process.

Bonus Tip - Back Up Files/Data Before Formatting

It's highly recommended that all of your extract and back up all essential data saved on your USB, SD card, or external hard drive to a safe location on your PC or another storage device to avoid unnecessary data loss.

You may use professional backup software for help or copy and save files to the target storage device step by step on your Windows PC. You may refer to this tutorial page for a step-by-step guide:

Conclusion

The causes of 'Why Is My SD Card So Slow' could vary, such as outdated USB ports, using a wrong SD card reader, or using an old SD card driver. Also, to fix a slow SD card or speed up your SD card, you may also try multiple ways to resolve the issue, including the provided methods above: replacing the SD card reader, optimizing SD card performance, converting the SD card to NTFS, etc.

Now that your SD card will gain a faster transferring speed on Windows 10/8/7 and you can move and transfer all data back to your SD card to continue using them again. 

Note that if you are having a similar issue in other types of storage devices, the above methods also help. Or, you can refer to the tutorials listed here for help.

How to Speed Up SD Card for File Transferring FAQs

If you have related questions, you can read the questions and answers below:

1. What is the fastest SD card?

SanDisk Extreme PRO microSDXC is the world's fastest transfer speeds of up to 275MB/s. Clocking in at up to 275MB/s, the SanDisk Extreme PRO microSDXC UHS-II Card delivers the fastest transfer speeds that you've ever experienced.

2. How do I recover a corrupted micro SD card?

To fix and recover data from SD card:

Step 1. Run SD card recovery software and scan the card.

Step 2. Check found SD card data.

Step 3. Restore SD card data...

3. How can I tell how fast my SD card is?

The speed of an SD card may vary due to the brands, formats, and free space left in the device. Here is a list of the average speed of SD cards provided by Wikipedia:

• Standard: 12.5 MB/s
• High-speed: 25 MB/s
• UHS-I: 50 MB/s or 104 MB/s
• UHS-II: 156 MB/s full-duplex, or 312 MB/s half-duplex
• UHS-III: 312 MB/s full-duplex, or 624 MB/s half-duplex
• Express: ≥ 985 MB/s full-duplex

You can look at the list and confirm which read mechanism your SD card is using to determine its speed. If your SD card is old or used, you can also refer to this guide for help: Run SD card speed test on Windows 10/11.