Why isn't my Nikon D70 reading the SD card?

After taking many pictures from the Nikon D70, the camera all of sudden starts saying that it can't read any of the photos I've taken. Also, once you turn the camera on, a message saying FORMAT is blinking. I don't know what to do! I'm obviously an amateur photographer and any advice would be helpful.

Cards go bad all the time. Backups backups backups.

You may be able to read the photos off of the card using another device. Try another card and if that one works, stop using the old one. On the rare chance that it's your camera and not the card, you may be able to get that fixed fairly affordably. The card sockets also go bad once in a while.

I guess the first question is, when was the last time you formatted the SD card using the format feature of the camera

You must format memory cards on a routine basis.

The best work flow is this.

* start your shooting sessions using a freshly formatted memory card
* at the end of the shooting day, copy (do NOT move) all the image files from the memory card to your computer (using a card reader) to a new file folder named for the subject/location and date (this way you can find your images years later)
* once the images are safely on your computer, format the memory card using the format feature in your camera
* as your computers hard drive begins to get full, burn DVD's of your images as backups.

EDIT: Buy more Class 10 SD cards to carry with your camera. An 8 GB, Class 10 memory card costs less than $10 from Amazon sellers

Because the D70 uses CF cards!