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Memory Stick for the H1 Question

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dchurney

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How many time can you use a memory stick and reformat it before it starts to get a little fuzzy and or not as clear? So far I love the camera.

Dave
 
One of the beauties of digital storage.

The pictures will not degrade.

reformatting is not a day-today activity. Usually, you just DELETE the

images you don't want on the stick and then keep shooting. Is there a reason you are reformatting ?

--
Happiness = F707 + H1
 
I normally fill up a stick when I take my daily or weekly photos for the website and I just format the stick after I transfer them to the computer. IS there a better way of doing this?

Dave
 
Go into PLAY mode on the mode dial.
Click the left side of the "ZOOM" button once. You get 9 photos displayed.

Click the round button to the lower right of the 4-way switch (the delete button)
A menu will appear asking if you want to delete or delete all in folder.
Delete all in folder, select OK when asked.

No need to reformat.

AFAIK, you can recycle your memory sticks forever without losing anything. This is, after all, digital. There is on and there is off. There is no "slightly on" or "slightly off". Nothing to go fuzzy, nothing to wear.

If it's going to die, it will really, really die - all at once. I've had that happen with Compact Flash cards, but never with a memory stick.

--
AAK - http://www.aakatz.com
 
you want to delete and press the delete key.

One way to do it:
  • plug in usb cable
  • turn on camera
  • open camera image folder on PC desktop
  • under "EDIT" select all
  • drag to a folder on your PC
  • after transfer, delete the images in the CAMERA folder as you would delete any file.
You only have to reformat if something screws up on your mem stick.

dchurney wrote:
IS there a better way of doing this?
dchurney said:
Dave
Click to expand...
--
Happiness = F707 + H1
 
Reformatting is actually the best way to work. It is good practice to reformat each time you transfer the images off the stick. Similar to your hard drive, the memory stick will get fragmented if you just delete and then add images. In fact, I would expect you to see a loss of total capacity of the memory stick with time if you do not reformat. Reformatting will bring it back to "new" again. In addition to fragmenting, there is a very real possiblility for getting errors over time on the memory stick. Once again, reformatting will get rid of any issues.

In answer to your oringnal question, the memory stick should be reusable indefinitly and the image quality will not change over time.
--
Bob Craige
 
Robert Craige said:
Reformatting is actually the best way to work. It is good practice
to reformat each time you transfer the images off the stick.
Similar to your hard drive, the memory stick will get fragmented if
you just delete and then add images.
Click to expand...
If you delete all the files then the file allocation table will also be clear, so no fragmentation (you cannot have fragmentation without files).
Robert Craige said:
In answer to your oringnal question, the memory stick should be
reusable indefinitly and the image quality will not change over
time.
Click to expand...
Depending on the manufacturer of the stick, they should be good for 100,000+ write/erase cycles. This is a lot more than 100,000 pictures (if you put 50 pictures on each time before erasing, then it would be 5 million pictures).

Keith.

http://photobucket.com/albums/v345/keith1200rs/
 
keith1200rs said:
Robert Craige said:
Reformatting is actually the best way to work. It is good practice
to reformat each time you transfer the images off the stick.
Similar to your hard drive, the memory stick will get fragmented if
you just delete and then add images.
Click to expand...
If you delete all the files then the file allocation table will
also be clear, so no fragmentation (you cannot have fragmentation
without files).
keith1200rs said:
In answer to your oringnal question, the memory stick should be
reusable indefinitly and the image quality will not change over
time.
Click to expand...
Depending on the manufacturer of the stick, they should be good for
100,000+ write/erase cycles. This is a lot more than 100,000
pictures (if you put 50 pictures on each time before erasing, then
it would be 5 million pictures).

Keith.

http://photobucket.com/albums/v345/keith1200rs/
Click to expand...
-----------------

I'm with Keith, and speak from considerable IT experience here. Some things to consider, explained in non-tech jargon as much as possible:
  • Fragmentation generally occurs when you delete some files and leave others behind. Why? Because you're leaving space gaps where the deleted files are. If the next file to be saved is larger then that gap, the remainder of the file has to be stored elsewhere on the card -- with the result being fragmentation.
For this reason, I routinely copy my MS Pro's contents to two other hard drives (2nd for backup until I can burn to CD or DVD) and then delete all of them from the MS (using the camera's "delete all" feature -- fast and easy). This clears it for the next group of photos and movies, lessens my risk of loss from leaving them only on the MS, and gives me the max available storage space for each outing.
  • 100,000+ writes is a good general rule of thumb for most flash memory media lifetimes. Whenever you delete files or format a card, the data files are not actually deleted, only the "table of contents" area is cleared (which count as "writes"). More technically, the deleted file space is marked as available for saving new files. This is much more efficient on battery life than overwriting actual files.
  • If you use a defragger, it will make a lot of writes to the MS, which counts against the general 100,000 writes lifecycle. (With that said, I've not researched MS's in particular for max lifetime writes.) Thus reformatting is better than defragging with this in mind. Between formatting and mass file deletion, it's probably not much of a significant difference in terms of effect on the MS's total life.
  • I think that formatting the MS after each dump to your PC is probably excessive. On the other hand, going a long time in doing a lot of saves and deletes could contribute to slow FAT corruption (File Allocation Table -- somewhat like a table of contents or index). An errant bad write could occur, and it can snowball from there, making some files unreadable at first, and more later.
  • Thus a good balanced approach would be to format every once in a while depending on your overall volume of use, write-wise. This restores a nice, clean FAT (table of contents) without excessive "wear and tear" (figuratively said) against the lifetime maximum.
  • As for formatting in a card reader attached to a PC vs. in the camera's internal slot: From what years of experience with flash cards in PDAs has taught me, I always format the card (whatever flash format) in the portable device that it's most used in. It just increases the odds that the card will be best recognizable by the device doing the storing and accessing out in the field -- just in case there are any differences in how the device formats the card vs. via your PC. Naturally, if that is causing problems, then by all means format it via your PC's card reader and go with whatever works best.
Again, these are just guidelines, but I think they'll work fine for most people.

J2B
 
Flash memory is still not quite mature yet. Some segments of the memory may go bad for no known reason, like dropouts on tapes.
The built-in hardware and software takes care of this problem by dynamically

replacing and remapping the bad areas with good ones. And that is one of the reasons the card will eventually die.

Formatting seems to help in reclaiming some lost areas.

Some vendors make "industrial strength" flash memory guarranteed to last for X million hours. This is for network devices to keep configuration data and other static stuff on something better than mechanical hard drives.

One wonders how this has been tested to be proven true. But you can always sue them if the card does not make it to full X million hours, provided you live that long, as 1 million hours is more than 100 years.

Tod
 
Robert Craige said:
Reformatting is actually the best way to work. It is good practice
to reformat each time you transfer the images off the stick.
Similar to your hard drive, the memory stick will get fragmented if
you just delete and then add images. In fact, I would expect you
to see a loss of total capacity of the memory stick with time if
you do not reformat. Reformatting will bring it back to "new"
again. In addition to fragmenting, there is a very real
possiblility for getting errors over time on the memory stick. Once
again, reformatting will get rid of any issues.
Click to expand...
and always without problems. I have owned Sony cameras for over 3 1/2 years. Reformatting has always been my method of choice. It seems easier to me than deleting, and it makes the Merory Stick "like new". I have seen people argue that deleting is better, but I've never seen any compelling evidence to make me change. Reformatting seems so simple and "complete".

Perhaps Memory Stick life is negatively affected by reformatting, but I don't expect life-cycle failure before obsolescence.

Lynn
 
There is nothing wrong with a reformat.
It takes more time to do it, that's all. (at least for me).

fragmentation is a bogus issue if you empty the stick.

I have never had a reduction in mem stick capacity and I have never reformatted. That goes back through years of F707 use.
Lynn Towns said:
Robert Craige said:
Reformatting is actually the best way to work. It is good practice
to reformat each time you transfer the images off the stick.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--
Happiness = F707 + H1
 
tyampel said:
Flash memory is still not quite mature yet.
Click to expand...
Flash memory is very mature technology! I was working with non-volatile memory in the late 1970s and I am now mature. It has been around for years and has progressed from multiple high voltages to single, low voltage programming. Write/erase cycle times have increased from only 100 or 1000 on early devices (when it wasn't actually called "FLASH") to in excess of a million depending on the manufacturer.

Keith.

http://photobucket.com/albums/v345/keith1200rs/
 
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