My 64gb micro SD card has given me a major fit. For whatever reason the card's "Volume is dirty" I'm trying to completely wipe the card so that I can repopulate it.

I have tried the following things.

fsutil dirty query - It was reported as dirty

In an attempt to remove the dirty bit I've attempted the following.

Run chkdsk /R - Fails
Run chkdsk /R /F /X - Fails

Reformat Micro SD card in my cell phone - Fail. All data is still there. Even after power down/power up.

Using Windows 8.1 File Explorer
Quick Format - Fail
Uncheck Quick Format - Fail - After about 1.5 hours "Windows is unable to complete the format"


Downloaded the HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool. It ran for about 1 hour against my Micro SD card which was in a USB Card Reader and it reached 100%. Yet, all data is still there.

Attempted to locate the Dirty Bit using a Hex Editor (DMDE Disk Editor) but unfortunately couldn't find instructions on how to find the bit on an exFAT filesystem. Found NTFS, FAT32 but no exFAT.

How can I get this card back into a state where I can wipe it clean and start over?

Thanks in advance.

Are you sure it is not write protected? Write protection is sometimes a symptom of firmware problems.

Actually SDFormatter displayed a message that it is write protected. There is no write protect sliding lock on a microSD card. I can copy files to it using windows without any write protection errors being displayed but the copies don't remain. How can I remove possible write protection from the card?

If all Bad Blocks have been allocated, the controller can make the device read-only. Or some controller/firmware fails can do this as well. The card is likely not salvageable. The actual cause of the read only state is likely to not be discovered, and this means no fix. As data recovery is not needed, the only option I see here is to RMA it.