Hereford Loc: Palm Coast, FL

I'm with "burkphoto's" last comments as best practice for photographers.

wdross Loc: Castle Rock, Colorado

Personal, I find the SD cards another source of storage. Even big SD cards are rather cheap. And big cards do not fill fast. This gives you a RAW and JPEG for usage and a separate storage area of all your acceptable shots for transfer. I also backup on an external removable solid state drive what I complete on the computer. I need to get better processing software, but that is a different issue. But when I do, my images will be in three different areas to be pulled from.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I can't store the same images in more than one location. (Other than backups, which are never used a working files.)
All my images for a given shot are in ONE place, RAW, JPEG, edited, cropped, aspect ratios (8x10; 5x7; etc.), tweaked, experimented, acceptable, not acceptable, ...
No way I'm spreading those things over multiple locations. Any variation of the same image is in the same place.

pecohen Loc: Central Maine

smf85 Loc: Freeport, IL

Use “All Erase”.

Probably the difference is negligible if the cards are only used on that camera. It could be significant if the cards are used on multiple camera’s. Particularly if they are of multiple brands.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I was glomming onto that... You are correct. It's a waste of time, unless there is a legitimate security concern (in which case, a low-level complete wipe is necessary to erase all vestiges of image files).

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

If I had a security concern, like a retired hard drive, I would delete the appropriate files and run Windows Cipher on the device. My camera cards pose no security risk.

smf85 Loc: Freeport, IL

All Memory cards do wear leveling. Formatting on a blank card writes a file system to the card and creates a header so files can be written. Camera formatting adds directories. Reformatting a card simply re-writes a blank file table and directories. Deleting files makes many writes to the file table cells as the files are deleted. More wear on the card.

Camera formatting is preferable unless you fully understand file system structure. While it’s possible to create a highly optimized file system that’s faster than a camera created one - there are penalties for that speed - they might not be acceptable for you.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

Go read your own link. You clearly don’t know what you think you know.

Soul Dr. Loc: Beautiful Shenandoah Valley

I have been into digital photography since the mid 90s. I have been copying my images to my computers and reformatting the cards in camera since then.
I have never had a problem with any cards using this method.

Will

jack schade Loc: La Pine Oregon

I transfer all the files to the computer external hard drive. After that it is just much faster to format the card.

jack

smf85 Loc: Freeport, IL

Hardly.

MJPerini

If Cut and paste works for you, and you are happy with it, that's fine.
But once you have 'Cut' those files you have removed your only backup copy until you create another.
You may not have experienced a problem, which is great, but you have left yourself open to losing files unnecessarily.
So it is not a 'best practices' procedure. You may not care, and that is also ok if you don't work for others.
Your potential pain is limited to the value you place on your pictures.

I do work for others and our procedure is that Cards do not get reformatted until they reside in two places locally and one off site. The card goes in a pending box near the workstation until that time. Then it goes in the "OK to reformat box.
Personally I follow the same procedures for personal work. It is easy, painless and secure.
Most camera manufacturers also say Don't erase files from the card in the computer, always reformat the card in the camera in which it will be used, and since that is also easy, I follow that as well.

I'm not one to try to prescribe procedures to other folks, you asked if there was a good reason not to "cut" files from the card and Paste to the computer. It seems to me there is, but they are your pictures and you seem to be ok with the risk. So Good luck and no ill timed power spikes.......

nathanweddings

Kind of like not reusing toilet paper. You can, but better not to. :)

srg

People who post dozens of pictures of the same dog, or flower, or bird, take note.