How to Recover Data from Formatted CF Card Error

"I have taken hundreds of pictures with 16GB CF card in my camera during my vacation. Right now when I was about to use the card, my computer recognized the card but I can't access it. The computer told me the CF card was not formatted. I can’t format it too. Is there any way that I can get my picture back from CF card? Best regards."

CF card format error happens mainly because of card system physical damage/corruption, improper formatting, virus infection or other reasons. Sometimes you can’t even format the card. When you get “SD card is not formatted, do you want to format it now” error, you might be worried about losing all files on the CF card because you can no longer access them. But that’s not actually the truth.

No matter you decide to format it or not, you’re likely to recover data after CF card format error with a CF card recovery software as long as you haven’t put any new data to your CF card. Files on your SD card are just marked as inaccessible data and you can easily recover them with a CF card recovery software like Wondershare Data Recovery, or Wondershare Data Recovery for Mac. This program can perfectly fix your CF card not formatted error and restore all data on it as original. It enables you to recover all kinds of files after SD card not formatted error, including images, audio files, videos, document files, etc.

best data recovery software
  • Recover lost or deleted files, photos, audio, music, emails from any storage device effectively, safely and completely.
  • Supports data recovery from recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, flash drive, digital camera and camcorders.
  • Supports to recover data for sudden deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, virus attack, system crash under different situations.
  • Preview before recovery allows you to make a selective recovery.
  • Supported OS: Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista, Mac OS X (Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8, 10.9, 10.10 Yosemite, 10.10, 10.11 El Capitan, 10.12 Sierra) on iMac, MacBook, Mac Pro etc.
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You can download a trial version of the CF card recovery software to fix SD card format error now.

Part 1Recover Data from Formatted CF Card Error

Note: When encountering SD card not formatted error, the best way to keep all data safe is to stop doing anything on the card, though you can still recover data even if you decide to format the card. If you keep using card after knowing about the error, the lost data can be easily overwritten by new data on your card,making data unrecoverable.

Step 1: Select a file type

To recover data from formatted SD card, you can go to select the specific file type or select the "All File Type" to start.

recover data from CF card

Step 2: Scan your CF card to look for files on it

The CF card recovery program will show the drive letter of your SD card in the window, and you can select it and click "Start" to allow the program scan files on it.

sd card format error

If you have already formatted the card, you can go to deep scan if quick scan can't find your lost data..

deep scan formatted sd card

Step 3: Recover files after SD card format error

When the scanning is over, found files on your format error SD card will be displayed in "File View" and "Tree Virw" categories in the window.

Please view file names or preview photos/documents to check how many of files on your format error SD card can be recovered.

Finally, you can mark files and click "Recover" to fix SD card not formatted error and save them to your computer.

how to fix sd card format error

Note: Please do not keep the recovered data back to your SD card immediately after recovery to avoid data overwriting.

3981454 people have downloaded it

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