My guidebook says periodic formatting of SDHC card is necessary

My digital camera guidebook says,

"As you read data to and from a memory card a number of times, it loses its abilty to retain data - so periodic formatting is recommended."

Is this true. Should I be periodically reformatting my computer Flash drive memory card as well?

If it is written in your own guidebook, mustn't it be right?

I would also add that reformatting regularly, with the camera that will be writing to that memory card, should improve file system integrity, and reformatting is faster than doing a Delete All command.

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http://www.alexanderrogge.net/arshutterbug.html

SD cards has limited write cicles life but surely you dont reach this figures. You will buy one with larger capacity because are cheap

Likein a batery time makes to lose part of the charge and make unreadable the data but in the case of the cards it take long time.

I have several cards and I use one until it is full and then I switch to the one that has the older pictures, reformat this, use it and put the newer filled in the last place.
Also I have several copies of my data in DVD and HD.

The copies in HD are refreshed from time to time making another copy first, comparing with the old data and erasind it.

Formatting might help reduce wear patterns in the solid state cells if the thing doesn't do load balancing of write ops evenly over all sectors. And particularly if some content is never deleted, then certain parts will never be used concentrating write ops.

You should format your memory cards in the camera evey time you download the images and want to erase the card.

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J. D.
Colorado

• Who says you need a DSLR to get the shot? (from Olympus Tough 8000)

Who wrote the guide book - the card maker ?

Only the card maker can tell you what the best procedure is. Only they know the detailed working of the card well enough to define this.

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StephenG

Pentax K100D
Fuji S3 Pro
Fuji S9600

MusicDoctorDJ said:

You should format your memory cards in the camera evey time you download the images and want to erase the card.

Click to expand...

AFAIK, the cards are either FAT or enhanced FAT. Quick Formatting as carried out by the camera seems to take a few blinks - that sounds like a nulling of the FAT entries not a sector by sector software zeroing of sectors or binary level hardware format.

--



Ananda
http://anandasim.blogspot.com

'There are a whole range of greys and colours - from
the photographer who shoots everything in iA / green
AUTO to the one who shoots Manual Everything. There
is no right or wrong - there are just instances of
individuality and individual choice.'

I emailed SanDisk and they said they don't have an opinion either way as to whether deleting or formatting is better for either performance or lifetime of SD cards.

You can take this as either "don't care" or "doesn't matter". It does seem to indicate there's no real difference in practice, at least that's what I'm going with.

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StephenG

Pentax K100D
Fuji S3 Pro
Fuji S9600

I have said that for normal user the number of cicles are high enogh to not have problems of weak bits. Is for that Sandisk don't give any recomendation

To asure all cell are used is for I fill up the card and put apart in a circle queue.
I format several days after it has been completly filled.

If you fill the card, selectively erase some files, fill it again, selectively erase, and so forth, it is possible that you might find write performance slowing down a LOT.

(To write over a used area of flash, you have to erase and rewrite the block that contains it, and these blocks can sometimes be quite large.)

That might be a reason for recommendations to reformat "early and often".

These are misconceptions about how file systems work on rewritable media like memory cards and also about write wearing on flash memory.

Basically every disc or memory card has a file format which includes an area where the files and blocks used are listed. Normal deletion and quick format operations all just write to the block usage table. They do not overwrite the file data itself, they simply mark the blocks it was using as free and that only needs a reference to the table.

This table update is not directly written to a card and the device you are using, e.g. a PC, may queue multiple operations to minimize writes ( and reads ).

The write failure issue was more significant in the early days of the technology.

Nowadays you have of the order of 100,000 writes before a flash memory cell fails. If you completely fill a card twice a day and delete the files twice a day you could at most perform 2 writes per cell a day ( worst case ). That means you have on average 50,000 days before the card fails, and say about 10,000 days before the errors become significant to the user. That's about 26 years !

Think you'll still have the same cards in 26 years ?

And that won't affect speed, just reduce capacity a little.

It's a non issue in practical terms.

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StephenG

Pentax K100D
Fuji S3 Pro
Fuji S9600

I used to never format my cards. I'd used them straight out of the package, and I never had a problem. I would cut and paste files off the card, and never reformatted.

But... then I discovered how EASY it was to reformat a card. It takes like two seconds. So now I reformat my cards each time I use them after transferring files off them. And I still have never had a problem.

I figure... it can't hurt.

If a card fails after 26 years, I figure I got my money's worth out of it.
--
Marty
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132/show/
Olympus E-30
Olympus E-P1

It's recommended to format the SDHC card in camera when you're going to start a shoot. If you delete a lot a pictures during your shoot then I recommend reformatting after you upload to your computer. Deleting images a lot will fragment the memory cells and will affect how fast the images are being written. I usually fill up the card first without deleting anything then format it after uploading to my computer or backup HDD. As far a flash drives such as SSD goes.. it's not recommended to format it. You can format a USB memory stick if you feel it's not as fast as before.

JohnHarlin said:

My digital camera guidebook says,

"As you read data to and from a memory card a number of times, it loses its abilty to retain data - so periodic formatting is recommended."

Is this true. Should I be periodically reformatting my computer Flash drive memory card as well?

Click to expand...

I format my cards every time I am done off loading photos
--
http://brianshannon.smugmug.com/

Anandasim is correct. Reformatting a card just deletes the File Allocation Table, it DOES NOt delete the files. The same thing is true when formatting a hard drive. If you want proof, reformat your card, after downloading the files to storage, reformat the card in camera, then, run a file recovery program, Lexar's or Sandisk's, you will find that your files are still there and the programs will recover them. To totally delete files you will either use a Low Level Format program on a hard drive, or, If you just want to totally delete a single file, you will need to use a specific program that is designed for doing that.

When something is so common, we tend to relax our understanding, our explanations. Some of us are photographers not solid state materials engineers, some of us are computer folk, know how to drive software or program software. Very few or at all are professional scientists and engineers working with the actual fab and testing of these things.

To summarise and being a bit explicit:

• Flash storage is not magnetic storage (hard disks).

• To the end user and the operating system software / firmware makes all storage appear similar so that programs relying on the operating system software don't have to know what is "behind the curtain"

• Camera and Operating Systems now routinely "quick format" media - they no longer insist on "erasing" data sector by sector, bit by bit. Neither do they "test" read/write of each and every sector to ensure the media is working properly.

• A "quick format" essentially erases (sets to zero, whatever) the File Allocation Table - which is a small number of sectors - that contain info on which actual bunch of clusters (1 cluster may be more than one sector) contain the actual photo file. That's all it does. It does not erase the actual clusters holding the data and it does not perform a read/write test of the clusters to see that they will continue to work in the future.

• Flash memory hardware "plumbing" details - how it is constructed, what makes it work is different from magnetic hard disk hardware details. We don't often care about this difference for the camera and the computer - as long as the camera operating system and the computer operating system make it work, it works.

The OP's original reading:

charleyd said:

My digital camera guidebook says,

"As you read data to and from a memory card a number of times, it loses its abilty to retain data - so periodic formatting is recommended."

Click to expand...

I haven't got a clue what the guide book author says that or whether that is a credible statement. By quick formatting the flash memory, nothing is done to "improve its ability to retain data"

What quick formatting does do is it initialises and re-writes the File Allocation Table and Cluster designations.

During repeated use of the flash card, taking it in and out of several cameras and sticking it into several computers (Windows, Mac, Linux), sometimes not taking the time to abstain from withdrawal until all data is written to FAT, with erasure of some files and not all files, FAT can get logically corrupted, directory entries and clusters can get logically corrupted.

A quick format of the card ensures that all this activity's (risk) of unexpected effects is erased. That's all it does. It does not have to know about the hardware and plumbing details of flash memory cells or magnetic dipoles or whatever.

I just read

charleyd said:

Anandasim is correct. Reformatting a card just deletes the File Allocation Table, it DOES NOt delete the files. The same thing is true when formatting a hard drive. If you want proof, reformat your card, after downloading the files to storage, reformat the card in camera, then, run a file recovery program, Lexar's or Sandisk's, you will find that your files are still there and the programs will recover them. To totally delete files you will either use a Low Level Format program on a hard drive, or, If you just want to totally delete a single file, you will need to use a specific program that is designed for doing that.

Click to expand...

--



Ananda
http://anandasim.blogspot.com

'There are a whole range of greys and colours - from
the photographer who shoots everything in iA / green
AUTO to the one who shoots Manual Everything. There
is no right or wrong - there are just instances of
individuality and individual choice.'