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'Card Not Formatted' Error on Pentax Cameras with Mac OSX Card Reader

22 Nov 2014

With some 64GB SDHC and SDXC cards on Pentax (and possibly other) cameras, you might get a ‘Card Not Formatted’ error. It may happen if you take some shots, plug the SD card into your Mac’s card reader, upload the shots, and then unplug it. I’ve seen the error on my K30 and K3. Though, it’s not an issue with the camera or the card.

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The issue is with unplugging it. With some SD cards on OSX, the SD card has to be properly ejected rather than straight-up unplugging it. Or else it’ll be in some sort of weirdly formatted state. That may be obvious, but I never ran into issues unplugging cards before.

If you hit the error, you don’t have to reformat the card. Simply plug it back into your machine, eject it, and then everything will have properly torn down for the card to be usable.