Most of the digital cameras, advanced mobile phones, camcorders, and other electronic gadgets use memory cards for storing photos, videos, and other multimedia data. One of the popular memory cards used in these gadgets is SD card. SD or Secure Digital cards are ultra small flash memory cards that have high data storage capacity, and hence can store large amount of data in tiny size. Moreover, the fast data access speed of SD cards makes them a feasible option for transferring data from your camera, camcorder, or mobile phone to your computer. 
However, due to the availability of these useful options, you cannot deny the fact that SD card too comes across serious issues that cause data loss like sudden stoppage in the working of SD card in your phone. Another problematic situation that SD card users come across is “Drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now?” error when they attach the SD card to their computer or phone. After encountering this situation, the user becomes unable to access anything stored on the card. If you check the property of this card in disk management, then you find that the entire drive reads zero bytes and the complete space on the drive is shown as unallocated. Moreover, the file system is shown as RAW instead of FAT or NTFS.
The storage device that has no file system is generally termed as RAW and this is the reason why the Operating System of your computer or phone asks you to format the SD card when you attach it to computer/phone. To get back the accessibility of the card, you have to format the card. Since formatting too erases all the data from the card, it is not preferred until you have the backup of your data. However, the situation becomes problematic when you do have no backup and have to format in order to get the device to a working state.
In such situations, use of professional digital photo recovery software is recommended. A professional SD card recovery tool can recover lost, formatted, or inaccessible data without causing any kind of data loss. The simple intuitive user interface of a commercial tool allows users to restore their precious files without needing any help of a professional or technical user. This is because they have simple and understandable steps that a non-technical computer user too can follow.
Moreover, if you have formatted your memory card knowingly or unknowingly after getting this SD card not formatted error, like Williams, then too you should not worry, as commercial SD card recovery tool is there for you as well. Williams, a photography lover, encountered the below mentioned situation; let us read it in his words only:
“For quite a long time, my SD card was encountering problems like it was hanging or taking much time than ever before in accessing; but another day, the situation became really worse. Last Monday, after clicking some beautiful shots of my grandma, I attached the card to my laptop and got ‘Removable Disk the disk drive F is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?’ error. After this error, I became unable to access anything on my card, neither on my camera nor on the laptop. Initially, I clicked no to this warning, but after a week of hesitation, I mistakenly chose the ‘yes’ option, which is for formatting the card. Now, I am worried about the recovery of my erased photos after the format. Is there any way to recover them, as almost all the photos on the SD card of the camera were precious to me?”
The first thing that is recommended in such situation is to stop using the affected SD card. The situation wherein you have formatted the SD card, you should immediately attach it to a computer wherein the recovery software is installed and perform the recovery operation. This precaution is observed to avoid the overwriting of the data that is deleted after the format. However, no software can guarantee the 100% recovery of data in such cases of format; but if you observe this precaution, then you can perform the maximum recovery of your lost photos.
You may think that how already deleted files can be overwritten and how a recovery software can recover the data that is not at all present on the media? Does it do some miracle? No, the recovery tools do not do any miracle; instead, they just take the advantage of the file saving mechanism of data storage devices. The data storage devices maintain an index file. This index file lists the index entries of all the data stored on the drive. All the information stored in the index file or rather index entry of a file is used by the Operating System (OS) to access this file.
The deletion of a file or formatting only erases the index entry and the original file remains at its place physically intact. Moreover, in such situation, the emptied index entries are thought as free space or to be used space. In such situation, if you store a new file, then there are high chances of overwriting of the existing (or in nonprofessional terms the deleted file) file. An overwritten file is impossible to be retrieved by any professional software; thus, it is said to observe this precaution.
On the other hand, the recovery tools take the advantage of this mechanism of data storage device, as they search for all the spaces that are marked free to reuse on the index file. They go to those places and extract data from there. However, in such case, the chances of 100% recovery are less because the file system is already RAW and all the space is shown as unallocated. However, the recovery software can recover your invaluable photos and videos stored on your SD card in both the cases, but the chances of successful recovery are less in the case wherein the formatting is done.
Therefore, here, when a user encounters “Drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now?” error, we have two cases:
- When the SD Card is Not Formatted
- When the SD Card is Formatted
In both the cases, the recovery software can do the needful for you; but in the second case, when SD card is formatted, chances of complete recovery are less. Moreover, apart from above precautions, for maximum recovery of your files in both the cases, it is suggested to attach the affected SD card through card reader. Most of the efficient tools work well with memory cards.
In addition to this, a professional tool for this category is available for both Mac and Windows users. So, if you encounter similar problem with your Mac machine, then you can use recovery or more specifically photo recovery tool for Mac. A reliable tool also provides the free demo version. Though the demo is not a complete software, but it provides various features and functionalities. After getting satisfied by the demo, you can purchase the license of the complete software and undo your loss.
So what are you waiting for, just opt for an efficient photo recovery tool and recover your invaluable photos, videos, and other multimedia data.
