Reinsert/change the card or format card with a camera'. Why do need to format SD card for Canon camera? For example, you get the message 'card cannot be accessed. Download for Windows Download for macOSĪs a Canon camera user, whether you’re a beginner or old stager, you need to learn how to format a memory card on a Canon camera. After then, feel free to format memory card for Canon camera. Before getting down to the task, if you can’t access the photos/videos in the SD card, try Canon camera memory card recovery software to recover them first. This article is a step-by-step guide, telling you how to format SD card on Canon camera on the device itself or on the computer. Sometimes, to make it work, you need to format SD card on Canon camera. If you don't, use the camera's own formatting to be safe.Canon camera SD card is the place where all shot videos and photos are saved. If you understand all this, there's absolutely no harm in formatting the card on your computer, with the special SD Card Association firmware or with the OS's own tools. Formatting in-camera causes the DCIM folder structure to be created - but as this happens when you write a photo if it's not there already, this is unimportant.Keeping it all in-camera is safer here (but I've never heard of this really happening - the filesystem format is simple and well understood). Very unlikely, but a bug in some OS's FAT implementation or in the camera's own firmware could conflict.Better to just say 'do it in the camera'. This would cause confused users and expensive tech-support calls. A user could format the card with an incompatible filesystem, like NTFS or HFS.There's more on this under How often should memory cards be formatted?Īs answers to that question note, camera makers usually recommend formatting in-camera rather than with a computer. Since this is terribly slow on any storage device of the capacities we use these days, every OS uses the better-for-flash quick formatting anyway. I think the main concern is that the OS may do a 'full format', causing unnecessary writes. The concern about less than optimal performance is unlikely to be relevant with any modern operating system (or camera). When using your camera to store photos, you can just ignore it. This area is theoretically used for user-hostile copy protection and is not really for your benefit in any case. The 'protected area' is not important for photography I'm not aware of any camera that uses it. The short answer is that it doesn't really matter.

How to format sd card in canon camera