format new memory cards?

[momsavealot]

Hi! I just bought 2 more 2gb memory cards for my camera for our trip. Do I need to format them? When do you ever need to format a card? Thanks!

 

[ukcatfan]

I reformat instead of erasing. Always do it in camera though. Theoretically it should lower the chances of corrupt data, but it probably does not make much of a difference.

 

[YesDear]

Yes format the card in the camera. Depending how you store pictures you will want to probably reformat them every time you download the pictures to a storage device.

I have actually started formatting the card twice in the camera to truly clean it out.

Just like a hard drive, when you format the card you just tell the card it is ready to write over the info that is there. Should you have a corrupt file you can possibly recover the image with an image software program. Formatting twice erases the card. You always have the least chance for errors if you totally erase and reformat.

Also a note to always turn your camera off before you take the card out. It acutally can create an electrical charge and damage the camera and or the card.

 

[webshark3]

I reformat instead of erasing. Always do it in camera though. Theoretically it should lower the chances of corrupt data, but it probably does not make much of a difference.

To add to your post, users of my camera in another forum complained that their write/read times were slower on 8GB cards versus smaller cards of the same type. Re-formatting each time helped keep the larger cards at peak performance.

 

[seashoreCM]

For digital cameras I recommend a low level format (if your camera has that) before using a memory card for the first time and again no later than every third time you empty out the card and start over taking pictures.

If you continually delete pictures here and there and don't empty out the card completely, the card can "slow down" the camera noticeably. Formatting, either low level or regular, does not require proactively deleting or emptying out the pictures first, and is much quicker than deleting all the pictures individually.

(Do not do low level format on a computer disk drive unless you are a computer configuration expert.)

Disney hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/digicam.htm

 

[Groucho]

What webshark3 and seashoreCM are talking about (at the risk of putting words in their mouths, feel free to correct me if I'm misunderstand you) is formatting to reduce the possibility of fragmentation. I don't think that this is a valid concern with memory cards; in fact, my understanding is that they store memory in a more or less random order regardless; it makes no difference if there's no fragmentation or a ton of it. Hard drives that are heavily fragmented slow down because the head has to physically move back and forth - there's no moving parts in a memory card.

There also should be no need to double-format a card. There's no real downside so do it if you want, but it won't make a difference. It does not do any more or less erasing of the card on a second format.

Ultimately, though, theoretically there should really be no need to ever format a memory card... I do occasionally just to save time instead of chkdsk'ing it.

Also, larger cards may be slower just because they happen to be slower cards, not because they're larger or fragmented. For example, I have two class 6 8 gig cards, and one is very clearly much faster than the other. (Transcend faster than PQI.) It's very possible to have a fast smaller card and a slow bigger card.

 

[webshark3]

"reduce the possibility of fragmentation"

You got our jist Groucho. I think what your saying is good for smaller cards (2GB and less). Fragmented or not, there's not a whole lot to read through. But my 8GB Extreme III (and confimred by many others) is significantly slower (reading and writing) when used often without formatting.

We can't fully put the blame on the card (afterall, the cameras are usually the bottleneck), but we do know that formatting helps with the issues. I don't think a low-level format is necessary though. Just let the camera do it each time you empty the card.

 

[Boo Bear]

You need to format your memory card often... especially if you do a lot of selective deleting on your camera. Not only can it enhance performance and prevent corruption, but each time you 'delete' a picture it's not really deleted. It is partially erased, leaving a digital fingerprint so to speak. Those fingerprints add up and can jam your card eventually and it's very expensive to try to have recovered. Our store charges about $100 for 1GB of image recovery. Formatting your card give it a clean slate.

 

[Groucho]

"reduce the possibility of fragmentation"

You got our jist Groucho. I think what your saying is good for smaller cards (2GB and less). Fragmented or not, there's not a whole lot to read through. But my 8GB Extreme III (and confimred by many others) is significantly slower (reading and writing) when used often without formatting.

We can't fully put the blame on the card (afterall, the cameras are usually the bottleneck), but we do know that formatting helps with the issues. I don't think a low-level format is necessary though. Just let the camera do it each time you empty the card.

Well, based on a little research, I could only find a few anecdotal stories, no hard test data. Frankly, I'm not quite convinced. Especially because flash memory does spread out the data across the whole memory (unlike hard drives, which usually write sequentially in order to minimize head seeking and access times), I'm a little skeptical. But as I said, formatting is pretty painless (usually a second or two in-camera) and has few if any drawbacks, so I certainly won't say that you shouldn't do it. Heck, I'll even concede that there may be slight performance changes but I would bet that most of the observations are more subjective and probably wouldn't hold up in double-blind testing.

You need to format your memory card often... especially if you do a lot of selective deleting on your camera. Not only can it enhance performance and prevent corruption, but each time you 'delete' a picture it's not really deleted. It is partially erased, leaving a digital fingerprint so to speak. Those fingerprints add up and can jam your card eventually and it's very expensive to try to have recovered. Our store charges about $100 for 1GB of image recovery. Formatting your card give it a clean slate.

I don't think I agree with that. Yes, deleting a file only deletes the file entry pointing to it, but formatting doesn't erase any file contents, either.

There's no "recycle bin" or similar on a memory card. As soon as you delete something, that space is available for writing. Assuming that your concern is avoiding fragmentation, the issue is not deleting files, the issue is deleting files in the middle of other files that are retained. This might happen via in-camera deleting, but generally, anyone loading their pics onto their PC will move every file on the card, leaving it essentially blank. At this point, there should be no difference in which sectors are free for writing versus a freshly-formatted card. The FAT table will retain references to the original files, but there will be nothing left of them once new files are added.

As for the idea that "fingerprints" will "jam your card eventually" and the card will need an "expensive recovery" - well, that's just plain untrue and installs an unnecessary level of FUD into those who don't deal with file systems for a living. Memory cards need recovery work because of physical failure or user error (accidental formatting/deleting, removing the card while it's being written to causing corrupt files)... memory cards do not need recovery work because they weren't formatted enough.

 

[webshark3]

"Well, based on a little research, I could only find a few anecdotal stories, no hard test data. "

On my DP1, during image review; if I press the delete button on an image from a formatted card, the delete happens. If I do the same thing from a hevaily used non-formated card, it's litterally 5-6 seconds before it processes the request. I don't disagree with you, and I think the camera has more to do with it than anything, but the fact remains, that the formated card performs better (depending on the camera).

 

[Wingman]

I look at it this way, it does not take that long to reformat after each use and it provides some benefits swell. If not, I will never know any different.