Photos or Media

SD card says 'format disk' — recover the photos first

'You need to format this disk' usually means the filesystem header is unreadable — not that the photos are erased. The photos sit untouched in the card's data area until something writes over them.

Stop doing this first

Do not format the card, even when prompted repeatedly.
Do not write recovered files back onto the same card.
Do not run chkdsk/fsck against the physical card — run it on the image.

The safe order of operations

1
Never click Format. Eject the card and stop using it.
2
Make a read-only image of the whole card and do all recovery on that image.
3
If the card has read errors, use ddrescue so bad sectors are retried and logged instead of aborting.
4
Run filesystem repair against the image first; if that fails, carve files by signature.
5
Verify recovered photos open before you reuse the card.

Commands that do the work

Image the card, retrying bad sectors

ddrescue -f -n /dev/disk4 card.img card.log

Try filesystem-level repair on the image

testdisk card.img

Carve photos and video by signature

photorec card.img

Realistic odds

Likely recoverable if nothing has been written since; partial after any reformat.

Your case will differ in the details. Load this scenario into the recovery form and add what you already tried — you'll get a plan for your exact situation.

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