Many digital cameras offer storage built in, but this is mostly minimal and will only store a few photographs. SD cards are the go-to storage method for photographers, and can also be used in a similar manner to USB sticks. They’re small in size and have a relatively high storage capacity, but this comes with a downside – they are susceptible to a number of problems. Some are easy to fix, while others may require the use of a dedicated data recovery service.

SD cards have a small switch on the side which offers write-protection, and sometimes people don’t realise it’s toggled on. Simply toggle it back and forth until it’s non-write protected, and this will allow you to read and write to the SD card again.

Sometimes, it can seem like your SD card is running really, really slowly, but don’t worry, there’s a simple fix for this too. The cheaper the SD card, the slower the read and write speed, generally. So if you have an expensive, top-end SD card and the read/write speeds are slow, a simple format should fix this. This will erase everything on the card, so make sure you’ve backed everything up prior to doing this.

Sometimes SD cards are formatted to work only on one device, so it may be rendered unreadable if you try and connect it to another device. One example is phones that use MicroSD cards, with many formatting the card to only work on that device. Again, a format is the only way around this, and again, back up before you do this.