If you film a lot with your GoPro, then one day you’re going to run into the infuriating “SD CARD ERROR.”
Or perhaps you’ve deleted footage or formatted your SD card by mistake. It happens.
These things have happened to me, and I had to find a solution to recover the data.
The infamous SD CARD ERROR happened recently while filming a moto-vlog in Sri Lanka.
Here’s what I did to recover the lost files.
Is there a free solution to recover deleted GoPro data?
If you’re looking for a free solution, I couldn’t find one that didn’t waste hours of my time.
I wasted a few hours just trying to find a free “solution” that worked. None did.
But I did find a cheap solution with lifetime upgrades.
The first thing to do if you delete footage
If you get this SD CARD ERROR / SD ERR or accidentally delete data, the first thing you need to do is preserve your lost data!
Remove the SD card and place it into an SD card adapter with the write-protect tab activated.
This will stop your computer from writing any data over top of your lost data, making it unrecoverable.
How to recover deleted GoPro files
In the past EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro ($149.95) had always worked for me.
This particular time, it did recover the files, but they weren’t playable. It couldn’t repair the corrupted MP4 files, so they weren’t playable.
So I went looking for another solution that would recover GoPro files properly.
I found a cheap purpose-made solution for recovering GoPro files
While browsing the GoPro Community Forums, I found more people complaining about their GoPros deleting footage.
In that thread, I found a recommendation to try GoPro Recovery developed by CnW Recovery Developments Ltd in the UK.
I bought it for $22.95, and it worked!
GoPro Recovery recovered and repaired 21.9 GB / 29 files of 4K GoPro footage that EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro couldn’t!
One file was corrupted beyond repair. It would play, but it skipped and stuttered. I guess this was the file that caused the SD Error and crashed my GoPro Hero10 Black.
If this post helped you, please leave a comment.
