One of the best advantages of a dash cam is that they need very little maintenance to run smoothly, but one of the key things you need to be doing to ensure your dash cam is working properly is formatting the cards inside. 

Without formatting the memory cards of your dash cam, you will likely experience symptoms such as; recording failures, memory card errors, gaps in footage or even corrupt file types. Luckily, formatting your memory SD card is pretty easy, and can be done within your dash cam or on a computer. 

We have composed a short article below that will explain how to format your dash cam SD cards for card maintenance along with why it's important to format your micro SD card and how often you should be doing it in order for your dashcam to work how it should.

Why Should I Format My Dashcam Cards? 

First of all, before we get into how to format normal SD cards, let's discuss why it's so important to be formatting your dashcam cards, to begin with. 

When using an SD card in the card slot of your dash cam, this tiny memory card goes under a lot of stress from continuous footage loop recording, vibrations and temperatures. 

Formatting the cards within your dash cam essentially resets them back to brand new and clears all dash cam footage, not only does this open your cards up to more recording space, but it also straightens out any performance issues and saves you time than manually deleting each piece of footage. 

How Often Should I Format My Flash Memory Cards & What Memory Card Should I Use? 

Formatting your dash cam SD card should be done at least every 3-4 weeks, as regular memory card formatting will help your dash cam perform better and even prolong its lifespan.

Avoid buying fake SD cards from the internet, these cards will often give you unplayable video files and fail quickly, they could also potentially ruin your dashcam in the long run, look for a reputable brand such as a Nextbase SD card.

How Do I Format An SD Card For My Dashcam?

So, the formatting process for your dashcams SD card can be done in two ways, one is by reformatting the card on the dashcam itself and the other is by hooking it up to your PC or laptop. 

We will start first with how to re-format your SD card within your dashcam. 

• Step One - Turn on your dashcam, stop recording then navigate to set-up in its menu.
• Step Two - Scroll through the menu until you find the option to re-format your card and select, this process can take a short time or a long time depending on the recording lengths you have.
• Step Three - Volia, you should get a format card message to say your SD card has been re-formatted. 

For a computer or laptop, on the other hand, you will need to make sure you remove the SD card first. 

• Step One - Insert your micro SD card into the card port on your laptop or computer and wait until it reads. 
• Step Two - When the drive appears on your computer, right-click it and select either format for windows or erase for a mac. 
• Step Three - Allow the card to reformat and click the FAT32 default option if it's available, if not download a free FAT32 programmer and repeat the same steps. 
• Step Four - Wait until your get the format card message then eject your card and place it back into your dashcam, to check all is working correctly.

Final Words

To conclude, formatting your SD card in your dash cam is not something that should be neglected for your dash cam to be working as efficiently as it can. Make sure to format the SD card within your dashcam at least once a month and copy any files over that you want before doing this process.