micro SD card is not detected anywhere and needs to be formatted

Question

I have a brand new 128GB SanDisk micro SD card that I was trying to setup for modding my switch. After the process of partitioning it and placing it in my switch, the SD card would no longer be recognized by anything and the filesystem is most likely corrupt.

When I put it back into my computer, it didn't show up in file explorer. I went to Disk Management, but there was nothing there. Same story with Device Manager. I used diskpart from the administrator command prompt, but there was nothing there either.

The micro SD card reader that was included works flawlessly with other known good micro SD cards, so it wasn't that. When I put it into my switch, it says I need to insert an SD card and then proceeds to shut down. This is a safety feature for when the switch has its SD card taken out while on, which only shows up for me when my micro SD card is inside the switch, so the card isn't dead, still functions and can be (somewhat) detected.

Even the multiple file recovery and partitioning tools that I have downloaded and used on my computer can't detect it. I know that micro SD cards are relatively cheap and replaceable, but I would rather not throw this one away and just buy a new one, but try to fix it. An answer here may apply to other drives as well for other people (or me in the future).

Any type of recovery/partitioning tool or procedure, preferably free, would help out. Even if I have to write a program that manually sends data to/from the SD card slot and manually format/deliberately corrupt it in a way my computer can detect, I'm at least willing to try it.

I am running Windows 10.
The files are expendable.

Answer 1

after ... placing it in my switch, the sd card would no longer be recognized

Have you ensured that this SD type is compatible with your switch? if not the switch may damage SD or write to it some bytes which prevents SD recognizing.

When I put it into my switch, it says I need to insert an sd card and then proceeds to shut down, which is a safety feature for when the switch has its sd card taken out while on, which only shows up for me when my microsd card is inside the switch, so the card isn't dead, still functions and can be (somewhat) detected.

I think that the switch sees that SOMETHING is connected to its SD port. It knows that it can be nothing except SD, but it cannot access it - so it reports that the inserted SD (really - inserted something) needs to be initiated/formatted.

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Recommendations:

Go to SD manufacturer's site, search for init/check/partitioning tool for your SD (if not available, find some chip detecting third-party tool which claims the work with SunDisk SDs, detect controller and memory chips models, then search for third-party init/check/partitioning tool for detected models) and try to re-init your SD. If manufacturer's tool cannot access/init SD and controller and memory chips models cannot be detected by any third-party tool, then your SD is permanently damaged, and now it's garbage.