Okay, so the other day my camera was flashing “Card Full” right when I wanted to take some pictures. Super annoying. Knew I had a bunch of old stuff on that SD card I didn’t need anymore, so figured it was time for a clean-up. Here’s what I did, pretty straightforward stuff really.
First thing, I popped the SD card out of my camera. It’s one of those little ones, a microSD, actually, inside an adapter to make it fit the standard slot. My laptop doesn’t have a built-in SD card slot, which is a pain, so I grabbed my trusty USB SD card reader. Can’t live without that thing.
Slid the SD card (in its adapter) into the reader, then plugged the reader into a USB port on my computer. Waited a second, and sure enough, the computer made that little ding sound, and the drive popped up in ‘My Computer’. Sometimes it takes a moment to show up.
Finding the Photos
I double-clicked on the SD card drive icon. Usually, cameras store pictures in a folder called DCIM (stands for Digital Camera Images, I think, but who cares). Inside that, there was another folder, maybe named something like ‘100CANON’ or based on the date. I just clicked into those folders until I saw all the actual photo files – you know, the .JPG files.
Getting Rid of Them
Alright, decision time. Did I want to keep any of these? I quickly scrolled through. Nah, these were mostly test shots and duplicates I’d already backed up elsewhere. So, I decided to wipe them all off this card.
- Easiest way for me to grab everything in the folder was pressing Ctrl + A on my keyboard. Selected every single file.
- Then, I just hit the Delete key. Could also right-click on the selected files and choose ‘Delete’ from the menu that pops up.
- The computer asked me, “Are you sure you want to permanently delete these items?” or something like that. Since it’s an SD card, it often skips the Recycle Bin, which is fine by me here. I clicked ‘Yes’.
It took a few seconds, maybe a minute because there were quite a few photos, but then poof, the folder was empty. I clicked back up a level, checked the other folders inside DCIM just in case, but I’d gotten them all from the main photo folder.
Finishing Up
Okay, photos deleted. Super important step next: don’t just yank the card reader out! You gotta eject it properly. I went down to the system tray near the clock, found the little USB icon, clicked it, and chose ‘Eject Cruzer Micro’ (or whatever the reader/card is named). Waited for the “Safe to Remove Hardware” message.
Once I got that message, I pulled the USB reader out of the computer. Then I took the SD card out of the reader. Done.
Slid the card back into the camera, turned it on, and no more “Card Full” warning. Ready to go. Felt good to get that cleared out. Simple process, really, just gotta do it step-by-step.
