Memory cards and an ounce of prevention (Page 4): Wrong. Erasing (deleting) only writes the directory. Formatting writes the entire card. There is one thing that formatting will do...

TheShoe Loc: Lacey, WA

dave.m wrote:

Can't speak for all cameras but formatting in-camera typically only overwrites the directory index. The bits and bytes where the files were written would only ever be formatted with a low level format (ie uncheck 'Quick' format in Windows.).

Wrong. Erasing (deleting) only writes the directory. Formatting writes the entire card. There is one thing that formatting will do that erasing cannot - if a bad sector is found, it will assign one of the available spares.

TheShoe Loc: Lacey, WA

burkphoto wrote:

Sounds moronic to me... In the mass portrait industry, we formatted in the camera every morning before making several hundred school portraits.

The only time we had formatting problems was when an uninformed soul accidentally (on purpose!) formatted a card in a computer, or put a card formatted in a Nikon into a Canon, or vice-versa.

Bent CF card pins in Canons were another story. Thankfully, CF is mostly gone now.

Since all cards can be read by a PC, all cards of a given type are the same format. It is the index structure and possibly name that differs. For example, my FZ100 inserts an extra level of index when compared to my E3. And the lowest level names differ according to the convention that the name indicates the type of picture. Each type of camera names its RAW images to identify the camera.

David Kay Loc: Arlington Heights IL

BigGWells wrote:

Cards are about like anything else, if you take care of them, they can last a long time. I use the same cards in the same cameras, I format them each time the card goes in. If they are not in the camera, they are in a protective case. I make sure they are kept clean. Have not had one fail yet.

YET is the keyword here. LOL

edellington

My Canon 5D Mark IV has a CF and a SD card. I record to both simultaneously in raw. So I'm not worried about one failing.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

TheShoe wrote:

Erase the images instead of formatting. The cards will last longer because erasing only uses a small fraction of the write cycles that are used by a format. The life of the card is measured in the number of write cycles. By formatting every time, you are unnecessarily shortening the life of the card.

That’s a myth. Card formatting just wipes the old directory and creates a new empty one. At most, it wipes the first two bytes of each file. That’s why card recovery software can get your images back if you accidentally format a card (but DON’T write any new files on it!).

I have two SD cards I’ve formatted hundreds of times without incident.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

burkphoto wrote:

That’s a myth. Card formatting just wipes the old directory and creates a new empty one. At most, it wipes the first two bytes of each file. That’s why card recovery software can get your images back if you accidentally format a card (but DON’T write any new files on it!).

I have two SD cards I’ve formatted hundreds of times without incident.

I'd have to agree with you on this as well Bill. There is a lot of bad and mis-information posted here, some by folks who obviously have been mislead over the years. I've never had an issue with any card I've bought and used since Digital photography began. I find no use for my 256MB CF card that I bought with my Nikon D1H - but it still worked fine when I gave it away about a year ago. When finished a shoot, I upload my files from my card(s), and return them to my card wallet. Upon placing a card in a camera for a shoot, the first thing I do is format it. That cycle has been repeated thousands of times by me over the years using many different Nikon camera bodies. I never had one problem. I now use solely XQD cards. Over the years ALL my cards were Lexar except for one Sony XQD Nikon provided with my D5. I'm NOT saying there is no chance of a problem, just that it is a very small possibility. I did have an issue when I accidentally formatted a card which I had not uploaded, but I caught myself before shooting over it and used Lexar's proprietary recovery software which worked well but took a while. Merry Christmas to ALL.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

TheShoe wrote:

Since all cards can be read by a PC, all cards of a given type are the same format. It is the index structure and possibly name that differs. For example, my FZ100 inserts an extra level of index when compared to my E3. And the lowest level names differ according to the convention that the name indicates the type of picture. Each type of camera names its RAW images to identify the camera.

When you format a card, the actual data structures that are also written to it vary from brand to brand. I cannot use an SD card from a Canon G7 in my Lumix GH4 without formatting it. I cannot use a 64GB SDXC Class 10 U3 card in any camera that does not support ExFAT.

It goes on and on... working with hundreds of photographers in a mass market lab environment, I saw enough problems with mid-matched card formatting to just tell our staff, “After backing up images in three places, format the card in the camera it will be used in.”

That policy always worked.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

cjc2 wrote:

I'd have to agree with you on this as well Bill. ... (show quote)

Yep. To avoid gremlins, format in the exact camera that will write to the card...

MauriceWeiner

What I found on the Internet was that flash memory indeed has limited write cycles. However, by now [due to manufacturing improvements] it is unlikely that you'll encounter this within the normal lifetime of such a card. Usually this is in the order of 100,000 write cycles today and SD cards include circuitry to manage wear-leveling, that is, spread out writes over the storage media.

Also, the other replies to this question shows that normal handling can be a problem. I leave the card in the camera and download from there.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

MauriceWeiner wrote:

What I found on the Internet was that flash memory... (show quote)

Once again, not a very good idea on MANY fronts as already discussed ad nauseum. Obviously, these cards are made to be removable and, with a minimum of care and effort, will last quite a while. If you force them in, then all bets are off. Happy Holidays to ALL!

wolfd Loc: Vancouver, Canada

In over 15 years of use I have never had a card fail.
One of my cameras was dropped into the salt water by accident.
The card & photos survived. The camera did not.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

wolfd wrote:

In over 15 years of use I have never had a card fail.
One of my cameras was dropped into the salt water by accident.
The card & photos survived. The camera did not.

Typical. If a card falls in salt water, put it in a quart of distilled water for a day, then let it dry out for a week.

Carmine Loc: Westport, CT

Good workflow habits like formatting in camera go a long way. Also, I don't use HUGE capacity cards. If one should fail, you don't want it to have your whole shoot on it. Also I only do one assignment or shoot per card- download into LR which immediately backs up, then put back into the camera to reformat.

MadMikeOne Loc: So. NJ Shore - a bit west of Atlantic City

dyximan wrote:

Funny you should mention that I have about eight cards and I've taken some 75,000 photos with them. And yesterday one came up with an error messsge a couple of times but cleared itself after turning the camera off and then on again. And the camera I'm using is a new D500 with less than 10,000 clicks on it. So for safety purposes I will not be using that card again. But do admit I have accidentally washed my cards with the laundry a couple of times.

Very interesting comment re: your experience with your D500. A very similar thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago with my month old D500. Twice during the same shoot, I got an error message saying something along the lines of "unable to write to card". NO, I did not inadvertently lock the card. This happened mid-shoot. The first time it happened, I shut down the camera, waited 10 seconds or so and turned it back on. Problem solved. Second time it happened, I tried to remedy the situation the same way - NOPE, still had a problem. So I tried popping the card out and back in again - problem solved. When I opened the card slot "door" (sorry, don't know the correct name), I did notice that the card did not seem to be seated properly in the card slot. After reading your experience with the D500, I'm wondering if it has something to do with the camera. The SD card that gave me a problem was a SanDisk 16 GB card that had never given me a problem with other cameras. Of note was that there were about a half dozen images that had only the top half of the image. Bottom half was sort of a tan color. For the heck of it, I put the same card in my D7200 and have been shooting problem free for the last 2 weeks. Just seems very strange. I definitely will not be using the card in any camera without 2 card slots.

flashbang

Regularly replacing memory cards every couple of years - regardless of use - is about the cheapest form of professional insurance I can think of. And I do mean "professional." I usually keep a few of the 'older' cards for snapshooting - and replace them every once in a while. And for the same reason, I am partial to the 'name' brands: these days the differance in price compared to 'bargain band' cards is just not worth it.