{"id":668,"date":"2018-12-09T14:09:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T14:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?p=668"},"modified":"2019-11-23T08:40:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T08:40:59","slug":"how-to-reformat-a-sd-memory-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?p=668","title":{"rendered":"How to reformat a SD Memory Card"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;And Why?<br \/>\nSo, I typed in &#8220;how to reformat sd card&#8221; into <em>Google<\/em>, and the first bit of info that pops up is here:<\/p>\n<div class=\"co8aDb gsrt\" role=\"heading\" aria-level=\"3\"><span style=\"font-family: 'courier new', courier, monospace;\"><b>How to fix it<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"RqBzHd\">\n<ol class=\"X5LH0c\">\n<li class=\"TrT0Xe\"><span style=\"font-family: 'courier new', courier, monospace;\">Connect the\u00a0<b>SD card<\/b>\u00a0to your computer by using an external\u00a0<b>card<\/b>\u00a0reader. &#8230;<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"TrT0Xe\"><span style=\"font-family: 'courier new', courier, monospace;\">Open Disk Utility. &#8230;<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"TrT0Xe\"><span style=\"font-family: 'courier new', courier, monospace;\">Find the\u00a0<b>SD card<\/b>\u00a0in the left side of the window. &#8230;<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"TrT0Xe\"><span style=\"font-family: 'courier new', courier, monospace;\">Click the\u00a0<b>ERASE<\/b>\u00a0tab in the middle of the window.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"TrT0Xe\"><span style=\"font-family: 'courier new', courier, monospace;\">Next, click on the\u00a0<b>Format<\/b>\u00a0dropdown menu.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cbcdn2.gp-static.com\/media_library\/image\/322\/large_sd_format_win8_02.jpg\" alt=\"Image result for how to reformat sd card\" \/><br \/>\nSadly, I couldn&#8217;t work out how to open Disk Utility.\u00a0 Foiled at step 2 isn&#8217;t a great start!<br \/>\nSo, in Windows Explorer, if I\u00a0<strong>right click\u00a0<\/strong>on the USB drive, it reveals a drop down menu.\u00a0 \u00a0Select\u00a0<strong>Format.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Then hit\u00a0<strong>Start.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>\nIt comes up with a\u00a0<strong>WARNING &#8211;\u00a0<\/strong>IT WILL ERASE all data on the memory card.\u00a0 I hastily copy over 650 photos into a new location and then delete them from the memory card&#8230;So, now I hit Format, and quick as a flash, &#8220;Format is Complete&#8221;.<br \/>\n<strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">But what&#8217;s the point?<\/span><\/strong><br \/>\nWell, if you just delete images from your SD card, you don&#8217;t completely remove all the surrounding data.\u00a0 Even though it looks clear to you, there is residual data left behind that will eventually build up over time.\u00a0 By formating your card, this erases all the &#8220;hidden&#8221; bits and bobs, providing more storage for your images and hopefully reducing the chances of data corruption.<br \/>\nBut just to reiterate, always ensure your images are safely backed-up before attempting to re-format&#8230;as Pringles have discovered, once you start,\u00a0 you can&#8217;t stop, unless you have some special software to recover the loss.<br \/>\n<strong>UPDATE<\/strong> &#8211; so if you&#8217;re a software engineer like my husband, he doesn&#8217;t agree with the contents of this blog.\u00a0 We had a small debate&#8230;He&#8217;s going to tell me why I&#8217;m wrong later.\u00a0 What fun.<br \/>\nI found this website\u00a0<strong>www.digitalcameraworld.com\u00a0<\/strong>and the quote below is from the following article:<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitalcameraworld.com\/features\/what-actually-happens-when-you-format-a-memory-card\">https:\/\/www.digitalcameraworld.com\/features\/what-actually-happens-when-you-format-a-memory-card<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3 id=\"does-formatting-a-memory-card-delete-its-contents-xa0\" style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'andale mono', monospace;\"><strong>Does formatting a memory card delete its contents?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'andale mono', monospace;\">No \u2013 at least, not quite. Formatting a memory card gets rid of any existing folder structure that was set up from previous use, and refreshes it with a new one that&#8217;s specific to the camera you&#8217;re using. So, you won&#8217;t be able to access those images and videos through your camera, or through the normal way you would on a computer, as those folders are no longer there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'andale mono', monospace;\">The information on the card, however, may still be retrieved using image-recovery software. That&#8217;s because it&#8217;s still on the card, just not within the same folders as before. This is great news if you&#8217;ve accidentally deleted images or formatted a card that you intend intend to format, but there&#8217;s no guarantee that you will be able to get these back successfully.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;And Why? So, I typed in &#8220;how to reformat sd card&#8221; into Google, and the first bit of info that pops &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[17],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}