jarneyd Loc: New England

I have a newly acquired D7100, I am giving my son my D90, Can I take the sd card from the 90 and put in the 7100 without reformatting and losing the photos on it?
I keep all of my SD cards as a backup, it way less expensive than having prints made ever was.

Thanks In advance.

SonoraDick Loc: Tucson

Yes, but...

I believe the constant advice is to format the card every time you take it out and then put it back in your camera (after saving your photos, of course), and this is especially true when you're using it in a DIFFERENT camera.

I'd save the photos to a hard drive (or two) first, and then reformat in the D7100... but, that's just me.

proteus1 Loc: NEVADA

Very good advice.....

WALT

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

Its a good idea to use a SD card which was formatted in the camera you are using it in.
SD cards have a limited life span.

twowindsbear

New camera - new card.

Old camera - new card for new owner.

Seems simple to me

BigBear Loc: Northern CT

You shouldn't have any problem using the card in different cameras.
In the case that you take several pictures and then transfer them to a computer or other storage, the card should be formatted in the device that regularly writes to it which will keep files from getting corrupted from writing and re-writing.

As far as long term storage, I recommend an external drive.
You can get a 1 or 2 TB drive for much less than the equal amount of SD storage.

PAR4DCR Loc: A Sunny Place

Good advice :thumbup: :thumbup:

Don

jarneyd Loc: New England

I now have an external hard drive which I will load all the sd cards onto. I also had an external hard drive with all my photos on, which my Ex kept in the divorce. If I did not have the sd cards which I was able to grab, I would have no photos. I do not know how long the cards will last but they sure make a cheap easy, portable, backup system.
The new camera has a new card, the old camera will have a new card. The old card is not even 1/2 full so my goal was to not waste the unused space on that card, but I would rather waste it than corrupt it.
Thanks for the input.

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

As said earlier, you would want to format the card in the camera you are using.
I back up everything to an external, Then I also
have Amazon cloud, unlimited photo storage for
$12.00 a YEAR. which is a bargain.
I tried some of the free sites. I uploaded pics, then downloaded them and they were smaller in size, so some place down the line sites are changing mypics. Amazon doesn't do that ... I can afford $12.00 a year for off site storage.

lev29 Loc: Born and living in MA.

Well, I guess I'm a dunce. I swap my SDHC cards in and out of both of my Sony cameras, the A55 and a6000, interchangeably. Perhaps I haven't used them enough yet, but I don't notice any problems. What sort of problems would I expect to experience?

Also, I realize that all such memory cards have finite life spans, but just how finite? For example, if I use a 32 GB SDHC card and fill it to capacity, then erase and reformat it, about how many times could I reuse the card? How about if I do the same as above, except after deleting all the data, I don't reformat it but stick it back in a camera?

Thank you.

icemncmth Loc: Oklahoma

I use to just swap the cards between Nikon cameras.. Then one day I learned my lesson. I once read (can't remember where) every time you remove your card reformat it when you put it back into the camera. Didn't do that until I pulled the camera out to use it. Card wouldn't format and was useless. Didn't have a backup card. D90 one card slot. Also do a reset on your camera when you turn it on. On my Nikons its pretty easy to reset them. Two button push. I learned the hard way on resetting the camera. I had played with a lot of settings trying to get a pic. Ended up getting what I wanted and didn't think anything about it. Few days later pulled out camera and did a few shots. None came out because of the settings I had left.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

When storage devices first came out, they were limited to about 600 format cycles.
That was quickly improved to several thousand cycles and by now is high enough to be a non-issue.

lev29 Loc: Born and living in MA.

A-ha! So that's not really much of an issue! However, let me credit you as to your other statement about reformatting. Does anyone understand the mechanism(s) by which failing to reformat PERMANENTLY ruins an SD card? Or is its damage reversible and there's a published method on how to fix it?

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

The whole idea that one needs to reformat, and specifically to format with the in use camera, is bogus.

There is no damage at all.

However, there might be one small advantage to reformatting a memory card. The process of reformatting resorts the cards list of free sectors, which means that new files will not be fragmented when written to the card. If, and only if, data corruptions should occur and a "file recovery" operation be necessary then fragmentation might mean some files would be impossible to recover. No fragmentation, because the card was just formatted, will likely mean all files that are not corrupted will be recovered.

Formatting or not is not a cause of corruption, it just assures easier file recovery if corruption does occur.

The suggestion to format with the camera that will use the card is just a way to protect yourself from yourself. The camera can only format a card in one way, so you can't do it wrong. In a PC there are a few hundreds of ways to format a card, and all but one or two are wrong. If you format a memory card in a PC you need to know what you are doing.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

See tip #10
http://photonaturalist.net/11-tips-for-avoiding-memory-card-problems/

Of course these people suggest never formatting in camera:
http://www.digicamhelp.com/accessories/memory-cards/best-way-to-format-a-sd-memory-card/