I have several SanDisk Extreme microSD cards (red with black) that worked very well in drones and cameras. I used them, then used the adapter to read the files on my notebook.
Suddenly, the cards changed from exFAT32 to RAW, and I can no longer read them on my notebook because it gives me the error “formatting is required.” Even formatting won’t let me do it, nor will I reassign the volume.
Here comes the strangest part: if I insert the card with the adapter into a Sony ZV-E10 camera, I can read the files and download them. I got to this point fortunately, since I didn’t want to go looking for the memory adapter, so I put the cards in the Sony. Anyone else having the RAW formatting problem on their cards?
When a SanDisk microSD suddenly shows up as RAW, it means the exFAT structure got corrupted — that’s why your computer wants to format it. The strange part is your Sony ZV-E10 can still read it because the camera bypasses the corrupted file system and accesses the data directly. Try recovering your files with photo recovery software before reformatting. Once you’ve backed everything up, format the card inside the camera, not on the computer. Also, swap out your adapter - cheap ones often cause this problem.
My recommendations for Photo Recovery tools are: Stellar Photo Recovery, Photorec, and R-Photo.
Given the card file system is mangled, safer is to get a new card and forget about the damaged one. I suggest a USB cable to the camera can gain access to images/video safely.
