I take pictures on my digital camera which uses a SD card. My camera has an option to "erase all images" as well as "format disc/card". I take 10 pics or 100 pics, upload/download (whatever, is there really a difference between uptown and downtown?) to my PC. Verify, back them up and wanna get'em off my SD card. Do I hit "erase all images" or "format disc/card"? I've been doing the former, "erase all images", however, last night I was told I needed to "format disc/card"??? This doesn't compute with me...what do you do? I understand you need to "format" the card for the instrument in which you intend to use it, but after that, that'd be it it right? I mean, I clean/sweep my PC once a week...defrag, scan disc, window washer, etc but I don't re-format the drive itself.
I ussually errase all, but recently i descoverd formating might be a second or too faster on my d70 because there is two buttons on it that i can hold to start the format, so i don't have to sift through the menus:P. But anyways, ive never heard of a reason that you need to format that often. I only do it when the card hasn't been in the camera last.
I always format mine. I don't know if it makes any difference, it's just easy (I also have a D70). I imagine it's probably good to format the card occasionally just to clean it up (as I used to do to my PC when I reinstalled the OS), but again I don't really know.
Actually, the difference is when you delete/erase your SD (or other flash card) it does just that-erase from the active portion of the card. Notice the card can be recovered even if completly erased/deleted pretty easily since the data is not truly gone. On most flash type memory cards reading and writing occur at opposite memory fields(rewriting does not occur on the field just deleted per se).
Formatting provides a linear clearing/organizing of the memory field in order from the lowest to highest in order per the file structure protocol(NTFS, FAT32,etc...)
Be aware though, even formatted cards can have data recovered from them (don't put truly personal info on them).
Just a thot: for those who have accidently deleted a image from their camera's flash card, Recover My Files works miracles to save your work from the great digital black hole.
Yeah .. KLZ's got it right. Erasing a file doesn't actually delete the data; it just removes the file name from the directory. The data is still there. To really remove it, you need to not only format, but overwrite the entire card with zeros, or some such. And even then, someone like the National Security Agency can get it back. The only REALLY safe way would be to melt it down and .. and ....
But I digress ...., what do we have on our cameras anyways? Ummm not you Keifer ... LOL
Neither formatting or erasing gets rid of the data for good. In practical terms though you are less likely to lose any photos if you format the card frequently.
OK, I'm a programmer from Way Back. I can tell you why they suggest formatting the SD card. It's because all digital media are ultimately unreliable. Any flexible medium will ultimately and without warning fail. Flexing it or using it ordinarily will cause its format to gradually lose reliability until one day it fails. On the other hand if you peiodically (once every thrre months) replace the format on the medium it will be less likely to "wear out". Take a fool's advice: Format all your media as often as you can. It's good or you.
...now that I have your attention...
I take pictures on my digital camera which uses a SD card. My camera has an option to "erase all images" as well as "format disc/card". I take 10 pics or 100 pics, upload/download (whatever, is there really a difference between uptown and downtown?) to my PC. Verify, back them up and wanna get'em off my SD card. Do I hit "erase all images" or "format disc/card"? I've been doing the former, "erase all images", however, last night I was told I needed to "format disc/card"??? This doesn't compute with me...what do you do? I understand you need to "format" the card for the instrument in which you intend to use it, but after that, that'd be it it right? I mean, I clean/sweep my PC once a week...defrag, scan disc, window washer, etc but I don't re-format the drive itself.
Sincerely,
Dazed & Confused (we's only one actual person)
SMURFS RULE!!