Formatting Memory Card
Dec 3, 2014 08:58:34 #
chapjohn wrote:
The reason that you should format the memroy card in the camera after each time you download all the images is that makes that card last longer and keeps all the images new images from merging and corupting the card. Just deleting images does not clean the memory card of previous images information, it only allows the device to overwrite that previous information. After a while of overwriting all that information become tangled with the new information resulting in memory card faillure.
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
Dec 3, 2014 09:13:14 #
bobmcculloch wrote:
I believe that when you erase or delete a file it ... (show quote)
When you delete a file only the directory is changed. The change is that a special character is substituted for the first letter in the file name. The rest of the directory entry and the data itself are not changed.
When you do a full format of any magnetic media (disks as well as cards) the entire user writable area including the directory is overwritten.
Some devices allow you to do a fast format in which case the entire directory is overwritten with a pattern, but the data areas are left undisturbed.
Jerry
Dec 3, 2014 09:29:06 #
chapjohn wrote:
The reason that you should format the memroy card in the camera after each time you download all the images is that makes that card last longer and keeps all the images new images from merging and corupting the card. Just deleting images does not clean the memory card of previous images information, it only allows the device to overwrite that previous information. After a while of overwriting all that information become tangled with the new information resulting in memory card faillure.
:thumbup: :thumbup: Agree; I format mine every time I put it in my camera. Keeps it clean and the files neatly stored.
Dec 3, 2014 09:34:24 #
steffro1 wrote:
Thanks for the advice! I generally shoot 50 images a day as a birder. I don't understand the logic of people who shoot burst of 6 or 10 shots of the same thing. I am a focus and shoot guy and only occasionally shoot off a burst of three on a moving bird. I went on an outing shooting ospreys and one guy took 1200 shots mostly of birds sitting on a nest!! When I get home each day I want to go through maybe 50 to 75 shots, not 1200 of the same thing! lol!
I totally agree with you on snapping just a few photos of one bird. I see that you live by me. I go to Huntington and sit on the causeway and see people shooting hundreds of photos of Radar. I swear just how many photos of him can one have. Not unless he is flying upside down do I need another of him LOL.
Dec 3, 2014 09:39:56 #
Cappy wrote:
Your answer is wrong. Just because you erase a bunch of files on a hard drive, you don't want to erase every other file, data, programs, etc.
Reformatting an SD card is so that you can start fresh because you have already copied your files to the hard drive. On the hard drive you erase the ones you don't want. If you don't reformat your memory card the next time you download pictures from the memory card you will also get those you didn't want from the previous shoots.
Reformatting an SD card is so that you can start fresh because you have already copied your files to the hard drive. On the hard drive you erase the ones you don't want. If you don't reformat your memory card the next time you download pictures from the memory card you will also get those you didn't want from the previous shoots.
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
He knows he's wrong, but won't admit it.
But hey, God Bless him anyway.
Dec 3, 2014 09:53:18 #
Mac wrote:
Is there a reason you don't format the card in the camera after downloading the pictures? It only takes a few seconds.
If you use memory cards in multiple cameras, the formats may differ from one manufacturer to another. Reformatting after each use can avoid having unreadable sections or cards that state they are significantly smaller than when originally purchased due to old and locked file space on them.
I swap cards all the time from Sony to Nikon and the to the small Nikon point and shoot and as long as the card has been wiped clean and reformatted in the camera it's being used in at the time, I've had no troubles.
I have had bent pins on CF cards (straightened and things worked again) and a few SD cards that got old and pitted contacts. When they stop working, I make attempt to fix but many times if it's a contact problem it's just safer to trash the card and use a new one.
There's also the possibility of getting a virus on the card by downloading to multiple computers. Reformat wil resolve this issue as well if done in the computer and then again in the camera the card will be used in.
At least that's been my experience.
Dec 3, 2014 10:10:15 #
We are like minded! I can't even look at a brown pelican or a cormorant anymore! lol!! See you at HBSP!!
Girl with A Canon wrote:
I totally agree with you on snapping just a few photos of one bird. I see that you live by me. I go to Huntington and sit on the causeway and see people shooting hundreds of photos of Radar. I swear just how many photos of him can one have. Not unless he is flying upside down do I need another of him LOL.
Dec 3, 2014 10:40:33 #
I like to think of it as akin to rinsing your dinner plate as opposed to actually washing it with hot, soapy water. The simplified explanation.
Dec 3, 2014 10:42:15 #
chapjohn wrote:
The reason that you should format the memroy card in the camera after each time you download all the images is that makes that card last longer and keeps all the images new images from merging and corupting the card. Just deleting images does not clean the memory card of previous images information, it only allows the device to overwrite that previous information. After a while of overwriting all that information become tangled with the new information resulting in memory card faillure.
+++++++++++++
Good Advice... Thank you - and I do Agree.
Dec 3, 2014 10:52:41 #
Gene51 wrote:
BEST ANSWER!!!!!! :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
And, also agree with Sonny! I do not have my software delete photos after a transfer as I want to be sure that everything transferred first. I also do not format my cards -- until I put them in a camera again. In fact it's the first thing I do when I insert a new card! Using this workflow allows me to save the existing photos on my cards as long as possible, well, just in case. I have many cards and I rotate their use. Each of my cameras is fitted with a card, formatted in-camera, and ready to go at a moments notice. Just part of my workflow.
While I'm on the subject, I'm pretty anal about making copies and backup. I transfer my files to a drive in a raid array before I even look at the files, but that's another post. If you're careful and thoughtful with this process, you reduce your chances of getting burned!
Dec 3, 2014 11:01:14 #
chapjohn wrote:
The reason that you should format the memroy card in the camera after each time you download all the images is that makes that card last longer and keeps all the images new images from merging and corupting the card. Just deleting images does not clean the memory card of previous images information, it only allows the device to overwrite that previous information. After a while of overwriting all that information become tangled with the new information resulting in memory card faillure.
And that's the truth!
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
Dec 3, 2014 11:05:34 #
chapjohn wrote:
The reason that you should format the memroy card in the camera after each time you download all the images is that makes that card last longer and keeps all the images new images from merging and corupting the card. Just deleting images does not clean the memory card of previous images information, it only allows the device to overwrite that previous information. After a while of overwriting all that information become tangled with the new information resulting in memory card faillure.
I agree fully. Previous information takes up space on the card leaving you less for new images.
Dec 3, 2014 11:37:11 #
Hi,
There have been a lot of answers, not all of them correct.
1) A memory location may become unusable and when you re-format, an unusable memory location will be marked as bad and the camera will never again use that location. The storage cells do have finite life spans although the number of erase/write cycles is in the tens or thousands to hundreds of thousands. But since we are talking many GBytes, there will be some number of cells that actually die early.
2) The card is actually faster when it is reformatted. When you delete a file, you destroy the lookup table entries that say where that picture is located and since it is not now claimed by anything, the camera operating system is free to reuse that area of memory. But before it can reuse it, it has to be erased. Thus this erasing is happening while you are storing your image. Flash memory, of which the card is made, can only save to an erased region of memory. It cannot simply overwrite the data. So if you do not do something to cause it to be erased ahead of time, it has to do the erase on-the-fly as you use it. Thus a save takes more time. And when it erases, it has to erase all of a certain sized memory area which is called a block. It cannot erase a partial block. If there is material within a block that is not to be erased, it has to be moved so that the block is free to be erased. Ugly process!
And one more thing. If while out taking pictures, you find you have bad shots. The question becomes "Should you delete them now?" "Or should you wait until you are all done?" My advice -- Delete them later. You only slow things down opening up little holes in the card's memory where it is OK to reuse, and again, on-the-fly, these little holes still have to erase before they can be written to. And if the new shot is bigger than the hole it is replacing, then you fragment the file and so on. So just ignore the non-keepers until you are done for the day and ready to load them onto your PC.
There have been a lot of answers, not all of them correct.
1) A memory location may become unusable and when you re-format, an unusable memory location will be marked as bad and the camera will never again use that location. The storage cells do have finite life spans although the number of erase/write cycles is in the tens or thousands to hundreds of thousands. But since we are talking many GBytes, there will be some number of cells that actually die early.
2) The card is actually faster when it is reformatted. When you delete a file, you destroy the lookup table entries that say where that picture is located and since it is not now claimed by anything, the camera operating system is free to reuse that area of memory. But before it can reuse it, it has to be erased. Thus this erasing is happening while you are storing your image. Flash memory, of which the card is made, can only save to an erased region of memory. It cannot simply overwrite the data. So if you do not do something to cause it to be erased ahead of time, it has to do the erase on-the-fly as you use it. Thus a save takes more time. And when it erases, it has to erase all of a certain sized memory area which is called a block. It cannot erase a partial block. If there is material within a block that is not to be erased, it has to be moved so that the block is free to be erased. Ugly process!
And one more thing. If while out taking pictures, you find you have bad shots. The question becomes "Should you delete them now?" "Or should you wait until you are all done?" My advice -- Delete them later. You only slow things down opening up little holes in the card's memory where it is OK to reuse, and again, on-the-fly, these little holes still have to erase before they can be written to. And if the new shot is bigger than the hole it is replacing, then you fragment the file and so on. So just ignore the non-keepers until you are done for the day and ready to load them onto your PC.
Dec 3, 2014 11:39:04 #
Cappy wrote:
Your answer is wrong. Just because you erase a bunch of files on a hard drive, you don't want to erase every other file, data, programs, etc.
Reformatting an SD card is so that you can start fresh because you have already copied your files to the hard drive. On the hard drive you erase the ones you don't want. If you don't reformat your memory card the next time you download pictures from the memory card you will also get those you didn't want from the previous shoots.
Reformatting an SD card is so that you can start fresh because you have already copied your files to the hard drive. On the hard drive you erase the ones you don't want. If you don't reformat your memory card the next time you download pictures from the memory card you will also get those you didn't want from the previous shoots.
Nonsense! After you download your photos and then delete them from the memory card they are NOT there the next time you download unless you did something wrong. The data may still be on the card but it is no longer readable because the directory has been altered by the delete to make it unreadable. For that matter, most of you, whether you know it or not, when formatting are doing a quick format which only formats the directory section. Your photo files are still intact. That is the default format on Canons. You have to select a Low format in order to do the entire card. I would guess that the other manufacturers are no different.
Dec 3, 2014 12:00:30 #
Actually, the images will never get so confused that they merge. That would take a total breakdown of the lookup table needed to find the files and if you had that, the card wouldn't work at all.
And you can't compare flash memory to the storage space on your hard drive. A hard drive can overwrite information whenever it wants to and the media complies with this request.
Flash memory is different. It can only write 0's. An erase cell is a 1. You have to start out with all 1's. If it finds that it doesn't have all 1's, it has to do an erase on-the-fly before it can write it's 0's.
Perhaps some future technology will not have this limitation. For example, one promising candidate is MRAM which has several variations between companies working on it, and they are only to the point of producing products that hold only a fraction of the amount of data that flash can hold, but they can be overwritten without an erase and if and when this or another technology becomes available, the write speed of the card will take a gigantic leap. But that is not available today.
And good cameras capture into high speed memory during the capture and then send the result off more slowly to the memory card. The more of this memory (at a high cost) that goes into the camera, the longer it can shoot before this memory fills up and the capture rate then slows way down. For instance some cameras can capture a burst of 8 or 12 or even more shots in a burst, but then that memory full and it can then only capture as new space opens up as it downloads to the flash memory.
And you can't compare flash memory to the storage space on your hard drive. A hard drive can overwrite information whenever it wants to and the media complies with this request.
Flash memory is different. It can only write 0's. An erase cell is a 1. You have to start out with all 1's. If it finds that it doesn't have all 1's, it has to do an erase on-the-fly before it can write it's 0's.
Perhaps some future technology will not have this limitation. For example, one promising candidate is MRAM which has several variations between companies working on it, and they are only to the point of producing products that hold only a fraction of the amount of data that flash can hold, but they can be overwritten without an erase and if and when this or another technology becomes available, the write speed of the card will take a gigantic leap. But that is not available today.
And good cameras capture into high speed memory during the capture and then send the result off more slowly to the memory card. The more of this memory (at a high cost) that goes into the camera, the longer it can shoot before this memory fills up and the capture rate then slows way down. For instance some cameras can capture a burst of 8 or 12 or even more shots in a burst, but then that memory full and it can then only capture as new space opens up as it downloads to the flash memory.
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