cyclespeed Loc: Calgary, Alberta Canada

Once more I suggest we need to visit SD Formatter at https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ and find out why using this site created and maintained by SD Association is the better way to go. The card gets formatted here which includes blocking out all sectors of the card that are damaged or otherwise can not be used to store data plus making all functioning sectors ready to go. You can then place the card in your camera, format it for use in that particular camera and you are good to go. Used this for 12 years on 10's of cards many repeats on dome of them and nary a malfunction. Check it out for yourselves.

calla Loc: California

Curious to know what you use outside of LR to cull images? Thanks!

10MPlayer Loc: California

I still do it by taking the card out of the camera but I did have a problem on my last laptop where the reader slot wore out and stopped working. Maybe taking cards in and out too many times wears it out. I don't know. At that point I was forced to leave the card in the camera and download to the laptop with a cable. No big deal really. Just a pain in the rear to make sure I had a cable around when I needed it.

IsoBob Loc: Hamilton, NJ

J

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

If camera’s manage SD storage like computers do, the card will have a header where the image file identifier and SD card memory addresses are stored. So when you delete an image you only erase the header image file data. Now the actual image data can be over-written, if the new image can fit the space. Computers can sub-divide files and scatter the storage, but I would guess cameras are not that sophisticated. So if you delete a jpeg and then shoot a raw, it will be too big for the space where the jpeg data is. This will lead to SD card fragmentation. Of all the camera help places I have looked, none talk about the sophistication of the cameras mass storage management. Have I drifted into la la land, yet.

royb_36-cox.net Loc: Phoenix

I know this isn't the OP's question but it is discussed in this post. The process in question is how to move the content of the card in the camera to the computer. I have a Canon DSLR and use the Canon EOS Utility software which came with the camera to download the new photos/videos to the computer. I do this by simply connecting a Mini (not Micro, they are different and NOT interchangeable, one does come with the camera) USB cable between the camera and the computer. The Utility has been setup so it knows the sub directory the new photos are saved into, which photos have not been saved and makes a new folder in that sub directory with today's date. It saves both the jpg and CR2 raw files (my choice). My Win 10 computer has drivers built in which displays both file types. Of course the memory card(s) never gets unplugged during this process and I do not need a card reader. I do the preliminary culling in the computer and then transfer the photos I want to process to my PP software from the new folder.

I don't know if other camera vendors offer similar software or if there is any other source for it.

robertjsmith

That's not really necessary, the camera companies take good care of that. I've been deleting them for many years on many cameras and cards. Have never had a problem.
Bob

Thedoubledee Loc: Florida

You are sooo right!! I just got my 5DSR back from Canon after ONE pin got bent and it cost me just short of $400 including shipping etc. I've started hooking up to the computer to download images instead of pulling the cards in and out.

scsdesphotography Loc: Southeastern Michigan

While all the details about formatting a memory card regarding refreshing the file structure and marking off bad cells are correct. There is another reason for formatting a card in camera and it has to do with the difference between magnetic and solid state storage. Flash cards and USB drives (and SSD's) store and delete files in a somewhat different manner than on a hard drive. When these storage options first arrived on the scene, extensive articles were published on these issues way back then. I'm depending on my memory of the content of these articles, so for those here with more up to date technical info, please chime in.

With magnetic storage the hard drive platters are divided into memory locations called sectors. Each new file is stored on contiguous sectors until the available sectors are used up. When that happens the OS looks for deleted data spaces and then separates the file and stores part of the file into each of those locations. The location of each part of the file is stored in the directory so that when the file is requested it can be restored from all those separate sectors. This is called fragmentation and slows down the read/write process. If the OS cannot find enough sectors marked as deleted to store a file, it reports that the drive is full.

Solid state storage media uses a different strategy. Data is stored in contiguous memory cells, files are not fragmented however and empty cells are always used first. If there are not enough empty cells to store the file, the OS then looks for a group of contiguous memory cells which have data marked as deleted. Unlike magnetic storage, the data in a memory cell cannot be simply overwritten. First the old data must be drained out of the cells, the cells are refreshed and then the new file is written. That process slows the read/write process way down compared to using empty cells. If not enough memory cells are available to write the file as one complete unit, the card reports that it is full, even though it technically is not.

If the 'full' memory card is examined on your computer you might find that your 2 GB SD card has only 1.7 GB of pictures on it, the remaining 300 k is simply not available because the space is not contiguous. Formatting an SD card does more than just marking all your files as deleted, all the memory cells are drained of data and refreshed at the same time, creating one large space for new image storage.

Most users probably don't notice the slow down because older and entry level cameras are not capable of writing data as fast as the card can accept it. Formatting is prefered over just deleting because it allows your images to be written as fast as possible and it maximizes the storage space on the card. Just so you know!

awesome14 Loc: UK

Superstitious nonsense for the most part. Digital cameras almost exclusively used the FAT32 format until about 2010, because it;s compatible with everything since Win95, it has no patent protection if the DOS 8.3 filename convention is not used in conjunction with long file names, it's simple, it works with large partitions (but not really large partitions). If you have a camera that uses FAT32, you can probably do deletions how you please, and format the card with a PC, Mac or Linux, or the camera.

But if you use SDXC storage, that spec. uses exFAT, or FAT64, by Microsoft. Not every computer has a driver for exFAT, so cameras make themselves look like USB FAT32 hard drives to the PC operating system. But if you remove the SDXC card and attach it directly to an old PC, the camera can't fool the PC operating system, and there's a chance of wrecking the format if you try to write to the card, or getting gobbledy gook reading it.

A royalty is paid to Microsoft on every device that uses SDXC cards, and every SDXC card, because exFAT is part of the SDXC specification, and Microsoft owns exFAT. Plain FAT32 won't work with partitions over 32GB or files larger than 4GB. A good rule of thumb is to use a PC made during the last nine years, and you should be fine.

But there's always the possibility of camera firmware bugs, so thoroughly test file transfers and card formats with some worthless shots before you rely on it. You can also google, i.e. "Nikon D500 firmware bug" or whichever body you have.