You have to do this in two completely separate steps: (1) recover your files, (2)fix the SD card itself - and in exactly that order.

Also, if you have another card reader, USB port, or even another Mac available, I’d give that a quick try just to rule out a connection issue. But since the camera itself is asking you to format the card, it sounds like the camera can see the card but can’t read its file system properly, so I wouldn’t expect a different reader to magically fix it.

Then, open Disk Utility and check whether the card appears in the device list. If it does, what’s the reported capacity? Does it still show something close to its real size (64 GB, 128 GB, etc.)? If the SD card is not recognized at all, that’s the problem.

Quote from Ryan404 on July 31, 2026, 11:19 am

You have to do this in two completely separate steps: (1) recover your files, (2)fix the SD card itself - and in exactly that order.

Also, if you have another card reader, USB port, or even another Mac available, I’d give that a quick try just to rule out a connection issue. But since the camera itself is asking you to format the card, it sounds like the camera can see the card but can’t read its file system properly, so I wouldn’t expect a different reader to magically fix it.

Then, open Disk Utility and check whether the card appears in the device list. If it does, what’s the reported capacity? Does it still show something close to its real size (64 GB, 128 GB, etc.)? If the SD card is not recognized at all, that’s the problem.

Thanks for replying so quickly.

The card is a KINGSTON SD 128GB C10 UHS-II U3. It’s not some cheap no-name card, which is why I’m so confused that this happened. I checked Disk Utility like you suggested. The card is listed there, and the capacity is correct (it shows 123.77 GB).

Is that actually a good sign? Does it mean I still have a decent chance to recover a corrupted SD card on a Mac? (I’m trying to figure out whether I should feel a little optimistic or prepare for the worst).

Quote from ever4ever on July 31, 2026, 1:23 pm

Is that actually a good sign? Does it mean I still have a decent chance to recover a corrupted SD card on a Mac? (I’m trying to figure out whether I should feel a little optimistic or prepare for the worst).

It means your Mac is still communicating with the card at some level, which is a much better situation than a card that’s completely invisible to the system.

At this point, move straight to SD card recovery software for Mac. BUT pick one that can create a disk image first (there’s a good comparison of tools with imaging support here). Corrupted cards can fail completely while you’re working with them, so having an image gives you something safe to scan instead of stressing the original card over and over. Once you’ve copied your photos to another drive and know they’re safe, then you can start trying to repair the SD card itself.

I haven’t dealt with a corrupted card myself, only recovered deleted files from an SD card on a Mac, so I can’t really compare different recovery tools for corruption. But I used Disk Drill when I accidentally deleted photos from my SD card, and I do know it has a disk image feature.  Maybe give that one a try.

Wow, you’re in pretty good shape compared to what happened to me. I once had a completely unreadable SD card after a paid shoot. It wasn’t mounting, the camera wouldn’t read it, and recovery software found basically nothing useful. In the end I had to send it to a recovery service so they could recover RAW photos from SD card and I could still deliver the files to the client. Got the photos back, thankfully. But after paying for the recovery, that whole shoot ended up costing me more than I earned from it lol.

Based on our team’s experience, we’d make the same recommendation.

We’ve been using Disk Drill for several years across all kinds of recovery scenarios (not just SD cards, but external hard drives, SSDs, USB flash drives, and other storage devices). After testing a lot of recovery software over the years, it’s still the one we recommend most often.

So for recovering your files, that’s the tool we’d suggest starting with.

If you prefer following a video, the developers have an official walkthrough that shows the recovery process step by step - https://youtu.be/6AXshz05hXQ 

If you’d rather read, we also have a detailed review. It’s based on the Windows version, but the recovery engine, disk imaging feature, and overall workflow are essentially the same on macOS, so it should still give you a good idea of what to expect.

Just do not try to repair or format the card until you’ve recovered your photos.

I got all my photos back (using Disk Drill after creating a disk image first, just like several of you suggested). As a bonus, it even managed to recover deleted videos from the SD card that I’d erased before the shoot to free up space. I wasn’t expecting to see those again.
My biggest worry was that the recovery would look successful, but the files themselves wouldn’t actually open. Thankfully, all the photos opened normally without any extra work, and the recovered videos played fine too.

Now I’m trying to decide what to do with the card itself. I’ve already gone through several methods from this guide, but Disk Utility First Aid is not working in my case. It finishes without actually fixing anything, and the SD card still isn’t normally readable on my Mac.
At this point, formatting is the only option that looks like it might actually work, but I’m still a bit hesitant. Is there any realistic way to fix a corrupted SD card without formatting, or am I just delaying the inevitable?

At this stage, it really comes down to what is actually wrong with the card. “Corrupted” can mean several different things, and the right fix depends on what caused the corruption in the first place.

• For example, if the problem is limited to the partition information or the boot sector, tools like TestDisk are sometimes able to rebuild those structures (you’ll often cn see this tool mentioned in corrupted SD card recovery Mac discussions, even though it’s not the easiest tool to use).
• That said, formatting is usually the faster and more reliable option once your data is safely recovered. During the process, the card creates a new file system, which is often enough to repair SD card file system issues caused by logical corruption.
• On the other hand, if you’re dealing with a damaged SD card rather than just file system corruption (even if it’s not damaged badly enough that the Mac won’t read the SD card), formatting may fail, or the card may become corrupted again after a short time. In that case, the memory itself is likely deteriorating, and replacing the card is the only long-term solution.

Since you’ve already recovered everything you need, I wouldn’t spend much more time trying to save the card. I’d format it, test it with a few non-important files, and see how it behaves.

Why are you still thinking about SD card recovery after corruption? Your photos are back, so just throw that SD card away and buy a new one. If you’re shooting for clients, memory cards are consumables in my opinion. Even if you manage to get this one working, would you really trust it on your next paid shoot? I know I wouldn’t.

I’d still format it, but I’d do it in the camera rather than on your Mac. I’ve run into this once after pulling an SD card out while the camera was still writing to it. The card became unreadable, but a format performed in the camera brought it back, and it worked normally afterward.

Can I ask why you weren’t using the second SD card? If your Canon has dual slots, always set it to record to both cards for paid work. Then if one card dies, you pull the good card, copy the files to your Mac (or even your phone if needed), replace the bad one, and keep shooting. I’ve treated dual-slot recording as cheap insurance ever since I lost a card years ago - https://www.usa.canon.com/learning/training-articles/training-articles-list/using-two-memory-cards 

This thread is a good reminder that photographers should already have a data recovery tool on their Mac. They come in handy for all sorts of mistakes: recovering formatted cards, restoring deleted files from a memory card, bringing back accidentally deleted photos, or rescuing videos that disappeared after a failed transfer.

Hopefully it just sits there unused most of the time, but I’d rather have it installed.

Thanks, everyone. I formatted the SD card on my Mac first, then formatted it again in the camera. So far it seems to be working normally. The camera recognizes it again, Finder can see it, and I can read and write files without any issues.

That said, I’m still not sure whether I trust it enough to keep using it for actual shoots. I went ahead and ordered two new cards just to be safe. This one might end up as a spare or a card for testing.

Also, somebody asked why I wasn’t recording to a second SD card. Unfortunately, my camera (Canon EOS R8) only has a single card slot, so that’s not really an option for me.

Glad to hear you got everything back, @ever4ever. You followed exactly the approach we’d recommend.

Hopefully everyone who finds this thread takes away one simple lesson: recover your files first, repair the SD card second. That order matters. You can always replace a memory card, but you usually can’t replace the photos and videos that were on it.

That’s why we’d still recommend starting with Disk Drill (or another recovery tool that can create a disk image first), confirming your recovered files actually open, and only then deciding whether to repair or replace the card.