Does formatting an sd card delete photos?

Answer 1

Most digital cameras do have a format function, however it only does what's called a quick erase. It erases only the File Allocation Table that points to the images' memory addresses. The images remain and can be recovered by any image recovery software. Even doing a format in Windows does not erase the images.

To truly erase the images, you have to overwrite the card's memory with new data. The best way to do this is to use SD Formatter available from sdcard.org. It is a free application from SD Association, the body that created and supports the SD card standard. What it does is it writes dummy data (all 1's) to every memory location on the card, then does an optional erase function on that (if supported by your card reader), then it formats it. It is the first step of writing the dummy data to the card that truly erases it.

Answer 2

Yes it does