This can be quite a worrisome error message. Your Gigabytes of videos, documents, pictures, music etc are about to become history. Whatever you do, don’t format…yet!
Why is this happening to my storage device?
What has happened is that your storage device’s file system has been corrupted (changed to RAW). This might have been due to pulling it out without properly unmounting, accidental drop, malware etc.
While there are other approaches to fix this issue, an easy way is to extract the data then format the storage device once all important files have been accounted for.
Oops! I already formatted, what do I do now?
Well, you shouldn’t have. This guide still has you covered except that it’ll be more difficult to recover all your data.
How to fix “You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it”
Download MiniTool Power Data Recovery and install as instructed in the text file then follow the steps in the video below.
Thanks a lot hovatek. A few years ago, I lost some of my important files in my sdcard because of this error, and I was hopeless that there’s no way I can ever save those files. I just couldn’t format it, so I kept it in a corner hoping to get a solution, but none. One day, I carried it, and summoned courage and formatted it. I was so sad. But with this tutorial, I don’t I’m ever going to loose my files to that error again.
Thanks for sharing your experience.