author avatar
5 December 2019  Ashley S. Miller  Specialist of Customer Service Dept.
 

Summary
When you are unable to get access to the SD card or you cannot write data into the card, even you cannot format the card, you should learn about how to format a SD card with low level format by force. Besides, what is low-level formatting? Anything different between the low-level formatting and the common formatting? We will tell you in this essay.



Part 1: What is Low-level Formatting?

Low-level formatting is always accompanied with high-level formatting. The followings are their meanings.

Low-level formatting

For some SD card suppliers, low-level formatting is a way to initialize a SD card. Some people may misunderstand “low-level”. In fact, low-level formatting is a way to format a disk completely. Zero fill is the basic step of the formatting. All accessible sectors will be filled with “0” and the inaccessible parts will be separated and blocked. Therefore, this formatting will completely empty the all data from the SD card.

High-level formatting

As for high-level formatting, it is the commonly known way to format a disk. High-level formatting is a way to write specific data into the specific sector of the SD card in accordance with the file system (i.e. FAT32 and NTFS). That will empty all original SD card data and initialize the card.

Part 2: Why Should We Proceed with Low-level Formatting for SD Card?

Sometimes when you cannot get access to the SD card, the computer will ask you to format the card. Generally, high-level formatting is way to solve this problem. But sometimes it will fail. At this situation, you can try to proceed with low-level formatting for the SD card.

how if sd card cannot be formatted

Part 3: What Should be Concerned about Low-level Formatting?

Although the SD card is able to return to the original status through low-level formatting, it is still an irreversible solution where all SD card data will be emptied. It is suggested that this approach should be not used easily. If your SD card is still under guarantee, try to contact with the supplier and change a new SD card.

If you want to recover the SD card data, we sincerely recommend you use Renee Undeleter.

Part 4: Use Renee Undeleter to Recover Data

If your SD card data has been irreversibly deleted due to low-level formatting, or if you cannot get access to the SD card, you can use Renee Undeleter to recover the data.

Renee Undeleter is the professional software for data recovery. It not only supports various file types but also has strong capability to recover data from disks, especially the formatted disk, deleted images and videos. It offers users three recovery modes, fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan. Users can fulfill their needs of data recovery.

Renee Undeleter - Simple & Powerful Software for Data Recovery

Easy to use Recover by 3 steps.

Multiple scan modes Fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan.

Supported file types Image, video, audio, text, email, etc.

Image creation Create partition image to speed up data backup.

Supported devices SD card, SDHC, SDXC, USB flash drive, hard disk, computer, etc.

Easy to use Recover by 3 steps.

Multiple scan modes Fast partition/whole partition/whole disk scan.

Supported devices SD card/USB/hard disk, etc.

Free TrialFree TrialFree Trial 800 people have downloaded!

How to recover the formatted SD card with Renee Undeleter:
1. Download and install Renee Undeleter.
press to the download button
mac download button gif
2. Open and select one of the recovery modes, fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan. In this case, we will show you how to recovery the formatted SD card through the first mode.
data recovery in renee undeleter
3. Select the target SD card and click [Next].
4. Select a way to scan, fast scan or deep scan. The former one lasts about a few minutes while the latter takes a longer time to go through the whole SD card. You can select one based on your needs.
select fast scan mode in renee undeleter
5. Wait for scanning the card. During this process, you can preview the results and select the target files. At last, click [Recover] to save them.
select the target files to recover in fast partition scan

Part 5: Tools of Low-level Formatting

If the SD card has been damaged severely, you can proceed with low-level formatting for the card. How to format a SD card at low level? Next, we will introduce two tools of low-level formatting.

SD Memory Card Formatter

SD Memory Card Formatter is a specific tool for formatting SD card published by SD Association. It looks very simple and clear. After the basic check of the SD card, you can select an option to format the card, [Quick format] or [Overwrite format]. The former one is the quick, common way to format a SD card while the latter one is a way of low-level formatting. Finally, click [Format] to begin this process.

how to use sd memory card formatter to format

HDD Low Level Format Tool

HDD Low Level Format Tool is a comprehensive tool for low-level formatting. It can not only run for SD card as well as the hard disks, such as SATA and SSD. HDD Low Level Format Tool is free of charge, at the limited processing speed of 50MB/s.

how to format sd card with HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool