Data Recovery ProOn Windows, the message is different: see Windows says “You need to format the disk”.
When a card's file system is damaged, macOS shows a message like “The disk you attached was not readable by this computer” with three buttons: Initialise…, Ignore and Eject.
Click Ignore. Initialise opens Disk Utility to erase the card. Erasing writes a new, empty file system over the old one.
What to do
- Click IgnoreThe card stays connected but Finder does not open it. That is fine: Data Recovery Pro reads the card directly.
- Do not run First Aid or EraseDisk Utility's First Aid and Erase both write to the card. Recover your files first.
- Open Data Recovery ProThe card usually still appears in the list, shown as “Unreadable format”.
- Start a scanWithout a readable file table, the deep scan does the work. It finds photos, camera RAW, video, music, documents and archives by their content (the full list). Their original names are lost.
If you already clicked Initialise
Stop, and do not save anything to the card. If the card was erased, the photos may still be there underneath the new, empty file system, because a standard erase usually rewrites only the file table. Scan it and see what the preview shows before you pay anything.
If the card does not appear in Data Recovery Pro or in Disk Utility at all, see your card doesn't appear.
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