Saturday, November 8, 2014

Steps to take when SanDisk micro SD card says “Card not formatted”

Last night we returned from our holiday trip. We had clicked lot of pictures and today morning while trying to transfer the photos from my SanDisk micro SD card, the drive showed empty. While putting back the SD card in the camera, the camera showed “"card not formatted - format card?" message.”
Such incidence happens, and you are stuck in the middle and think what to do? That is whether to format the card or not. And even if you make our decision to format the card, you get the message that Card cannot be formatted.
An SD card stands for Secure Digital Card. It is a small size flash memory card and is specially designed to provide high capacity storage.
When a Sandisk micro SD card throws “card not formatted error” the reason could be many. May be that no file system is installed on the card or the card has become corrupt. When someone formats the card, a new file system is installed on the card with which it is able to store new files. It is better to format the micro SD card, as if you do not format, you are unable to access the files stored on it either.

How a memory card format error can be fixed.

You can try few simple steps to get out of the situation, when you face such error message.

STEP 1: Connect the Micro SD card to another computer, through a card reader or a USB cable. If the card drive becomes accessible, then your card is all right. Otherwise your card has become corrupt.

STEP 2: IF your Micro SD card is still unrecognized then, try to install and download a Photo recovery software. Connect your micro SD card to the computer, where you have downloaded a recovery software and then start recovering your important photos.
STEP 3: After recovering your lost photos files, try to format micro SD card
Go to- My computer -> Management -> Storage -> Disk Management -> select the problem memory card and then format it here. 
STEP 4: At last step, you can again re run the recovery program to recover any data which had been missed to recover before format.
After formatting, the data is not completely erased from the SD card. One can make the use of recovery software to recover their lost files. However one important point to keep in mind is that not to store any new files on the formatted memory card as the old data could be overwritten and hence no data will be recovered.

Few Situations when SD card gets formatted.
  1. Formatting the SD card accidentally

Sometimes you accidentally press the format option. Intentionally or unintentionally, you format the SD card by chance.

  1. System prompts us to format the card

Sometimes the system prompts us to format the Sd card. “Card not formatted-format it now” option, prompts us to format the card. Even if you format or don’t format the card, the data stored in the card is inaccessible.

  1. Micro SD card corruption:

Due to improper handling, virus attack, improper shutdown, irregular power surges, micro
SD card gets corrupt resulting in format error.

  1. Format an SD card to erase

Formatting is the easiest way to erase the contents of the card. Sometimes, the format option is used intentionally to erase the content of the card.

  1. SD Card Cannot Be Formatted

Sometimes after choosing the format option, windows gives a message that : Windows cannot complete the format.
.Go to Properties Tools -> Check Now -> Tick "Automatically fixes file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors".

Perform check disk if still the SD card is not recognized. Type chkdsk H:/F (H: is the drive letter of your SD card).