The warning for this error can be easily misunderstood. The camera or computer isn't telling you that your pictures are destroyed; the camera or computer is just saying the card's index (its file system) has become unreadable, therefore it doesn't know where anything is located on the card. Underneath the broken index, almost always, your photos still sit intact in the flash memory. It is exactly because of this that the prompt is so hazardous: clicking the option it provides is what starts erasing the map a recovery is rebuilt from.
Formatting does not repair an index; it simply writes a new empty index on top of the old one. If you let a corrupted card be quick-formatted, then the file structures holding your photos' names, folders and dates will be overwritten within seconds. Whenever there are photographs on the card that matter to you, never agree to format or accept any suggestion to format.
Move the card to another card reader before blaming the card, as card readers die more often than SD cards do, and the SD card slot built into a laptop is the least reliable reader of all. A good quality stand-alone USB card reader provides you with a fairer test. Test your card in a different computer as well. Also, when working with full-size SD cards, there is a small lock slider along one side of the card. If this switch is accidentally moved into the locked position, it can produce some rather unusual behaviour (such as being unable to either write to or format the card).
If the memory card shows up on your computer but the images don't show up, take it out of use immediately: do not take even one test photo or let a camera or phone write a single thing to it, since everything new written will go right over the top of what you are trying to recover. In addition, if the memory card does not appear anywhere, or reports some ridiculous size (like a 64GB card claiming to be 30MB, the textbook failed controller) then put all software away, as nothing short of chip-level recovery can read a card in this state.
Plenty of users experience this from the opposite side of things. They have been experiencing issues with the card. They decided to wipe the card and start over, but when they tried to do the format, the format would not complete. Usually, if you cannot complete the format then either your lock slider is engaged, your controller has retreated into read-only mode because it is failing, or your card is dying electrically. In the read-only failure scenario there is generally an upside for the user; a controller that automatically locks itself down while it is failing often preserves everything on the card in a form that can be read.
The goal is not to make things worse by doing repetitive formats, looping through chkdsk or adding repair utilities to the stack of operations you're piling on top of a controller that's already struggling to manage any. If a card in this state has ever stored something important (that you care about), send it off for recovery instead of going back through the fix loop again.
In the lab, a corrupted card is read once into an image file, sector by sector. All of the rebuild takes place in this new copy; then, your photos and videos are reconstructed from it. Cards that are dead, lying about how big they are, or physically damaged (including snapped-in-half microSD cards) will have their memory chip read directly and their content re-assembled. Each route begins with a free diagnostic to show what can be recovered, and a fixed price, prior to making any decision.
The process of posting is very easy once you have your quote: tape the memory card inside a folded sheet of card, put it in an envelope and send it tracked and insured, or drop it off at the Bristol lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. More information on recovering data from your camera memory card can be found at either the memory card recovery webpage or by going directly to the free online diagnostic.
Keep in mind: When a memory card asks to be reformatted, that means it simply lost the file directory and not the images themselves. As long as the memory itself was not overwritten by a format or new images (i.e. written to), the images are normally still there.
We offer a free diagnostic on arrival, one fixed quote, and on logical faults, in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Please begin online or call us using our freephone number.