A damaged SD card is perhaps the worst nightmare of a photographer. All the stunning photos can be lost forever because some 1 and 0 bits are in the wrong place !!!
Although you may be able to retrieve your photos from a corrupted SD card, you definitely do not want to be in this state, which means you need to know how to format them properly.
It also means you need to work with a high-quality SD card. Buying a cheap, non-branded card is not justified, especially if you store unique files on it that you can't find again somewhere on Internet, such as your personal photos. There is no excuse for not using the best card.
Delete VS Configuration
When your camera's SD card is full, you'll probably be tempted to view it from your computer, delete a few photos from it, and then put it back on camera your, ready for download. Don't do it!
Simply deleting files from an SD card is a bad idea for the reasons:
- Any additional functionality (or use, if you prefer) increases the likelihood of data corruption.
- Deleting some photos is a very slow way to get space on a card.
- SD card performance is downgraded using.
Instead, it would be better to format your SD cards when they are full (or whenever you can). Formatting wipes and cleans the card and at the same time resets the digital camera folder structure (DCIM). And it does so without the downsides of simply deleting them files.
Save and back up your photos
First, do not format an SD card that contains photos that you have not backed up elsewhere. Remember when it comes to better safety of the data, that one copy is not enough and it would be good to always have two or even more.
We recommend that you import your photos to a computer through a photo browser and at the same time cloud storage provider such as Dropbox or Google Drive etc (Do not use Google Photos because this service compresses the photos to save space and thus you lose their original resolution). This way your photos are well organized and even if something happens to your computer or external drive, they are safe in the cloud.
Reformat the SD card in the camera
Once you're sure that you have backed up all the photos on your SD card and the backups are fully created, then you can configure the card.
There are other ways to format SD cards and if you do not do something sophisticated (such as trying to change the format or add partitions or do anything strange), everyone will work fine. But the usual advice from most photographers and every camera maker is that the best way to format an SD card is to do it with your camera rather than your computer to minimize something wrong. It's also the fastest and most convenient way, since you do not have to plug in any additional software.
So, with modern operating systems, you can format an SD card, but our advice is to follow the manufacturer's recommendations and do with the camera (do nothing but make it up).
The configuration process varies slightly from camera to machine, but in general, it should be something like this: With a Canon camera, go to Menu> Setup> Card format (Menu> Settings> Format card). Select the card you want to format and then press OK. If for any reason you have difficulty finding the card configuration option, refer to your camera user manual.
