# Unformatted SD card - camera saved photos - can preview on camera - but how to...?



## Completely Bonkers (Mar 21, 2011)

I forgot to "format" an SD card before sticking it in to my Nikon D90.  I've taken quite a few photos.  I can scan and preview them no problem on the Nikon.  I don't have my USB-Nikon cable here with me... in fact... I've never used it. I always take the SD card out of the Nikon and stick it in the netbook slot and access directly.

But this time I'm getting "card not formatted, want to format?" error. The files are there, just somehow not in NTFS/FAT accessible format.

Any ideas how to get these photos off the card?

Thanks to any solutions. 

#edit#
SOLUTION BELOW, POST#10 http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2231338


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## Sasqui (Mar 21, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> I forgot to "format" an SD card before sticking it in to my Nikon D90.  I've taken quite a few photos.  I can scan and preview them no problem on the Nikon.  I don't have my USB-Nikon cable here with me... in fact... I've never used it. I always take the SD card out of the Nikon and stick it in the netbook slot and access directly.
> 
> But this time I'm getting "card not formatted, want to format?" error. The files are there, just somehow not in NTFS/FAT accessible format.
> 
> ...



Are you sure the photos you're looking at aren't on the cameras internal memory?  Do you have a USB cable for the camera???  Edit... just re-read, you need a cable!!!


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## Peter1986C (Mar 21, 2011)

Download Unetbootin and a Linux distro of your choice, and use Unetbootin to write that .iso file of that Linux distro to a usb thumb drive. Now you have a bootable USB drive, do a reboot to start the netbook from the USB drive. Make sure you get into Live mode, which usually happens automatically (else you will get the choice, often refered to as "try without installing" or just the OS version number if the installer is a program within the Live mode).
Then plug in the Flash card containing the pictures and access your files (should work, if not either the file system is from another solstice or corrupted, or whatever possible cause that I might have forgotten about for now).


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## Completely Bonkers (Mar 21, 2011)

@Sasqui, thanks, but no, the D90 doesnt have internal memory. The photos are on the SD card.
@Chevalr1c, thanks, but am looking for a slightly easier solution if possible!


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## newtekie1 (Mar 21, 2011)

Perhaps asking Nikon would lead somewhere.  They might have a piece of software that will read the pictures off the card.


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## Sasqui (Mar 21, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> @Sasqui, thanks, but no, the D90 doesnt have internal memory. The photos are on the SD card.
> @Chevalr1c, thanks, but am looking for a slightly easier solution if possible!



Ok one more stab... I'm assuming the card is SDHC.  Are you *positive *the reader you are using is capable of reading media over 4gb?


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## erixx (Mar 21, 2011)

Do a WinUpdate, it is in one of the patches


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## Sasqui (Mar 21, 2011)

erixx said:


> Do a WinUpdate, it is in one of the patches



On a Lenovo T43p laptop SD slot, that patch did nothing for me... (Windows XP), but it certainly could be because is was a Lenovo


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## erixx (Mar 21, 2011)

Sorry then! And... Lenovo rocks!!!!


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## Completely Bonkers (Mar 21, 2011)

@newtekie, Nikon software works by reading from the camera, and therefore need the camera cable, which I dont have with me
@Sasqui, lol, yes. But it is always worth asking. Sometimes we can forget the simplest things 
@erixx, thanks, but no, this isnt SDHC reading problem... I have no problem reading other SDHC

As a reminder of the info I gave earlier, the problem is that I forgot to format the SD card. Therefore Nikon is writing to the card, but the partition headers are missing without the format, and who knows exactly where/what it is doing and in what "format".

******************

I would like to announce, thanks to this thread: http://www.photokb.com/Uwe/Forum.as...-one-freeware-hd-sd-card-format-recovery-tool
that I solved it with the first tool, PhotoRec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

It is a DOS based utility that works in Windows. It first scans the disk, in this case the SD card, and then recovers the files.

*ALL PHOTOS FOUND AND RECOVERED* with this tool. 10/10



I should add that the download page includes Linux, Mac OS X Intel, OS X PowerPC, and even OS2!

Hope it helps others


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## newtekie1 (Mar 21, 2011)

Glad you got it sorted.  Seems kind of odd that the camera wouldn't just format the card instead of just randomly writing the files to it.


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## Sasqui (Mar 22, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> Glad you got it sorted.  Seems kind of odd that the camera wouldn't just format the card instead of just randomly writing the files to it.



Very true... I recall an Olympus camera requiring a card to be formatted before using it.


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