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Do you format your CF card each time?

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DStan said:
If you delete all files on your CF card after transferring them to
your PC, then you will not have any fragmentation issues. If you buy
quality CF cards and practice safe hardware removal then you will not
need to reformat your cards all the time. I reformat them once every
few months. I remember not reformatting one of my Lexar CF cards on
my D70 for years and not had any problems. CF cards have a limited
number of times that you can write to them and reformatting the
entire card will reduce its lifetime, although I doubt that many of
use will take that many pictures on one card and reach this point.
Click to expand...
Actually, formatting REDUCES the number of write cycles on any memory card. Flash memory cards have a finite number of times that each memory location on the card can be written to. CF cards contain memory controllers which perform wear levelling. What that means is that every time you write data to the card, the card will save that data in a different location each time in order to make sure that all parts of the card are "worn out" equally.

When you delete an image file from your card, the data doesn't get removed from the card. The computer or camera just rewrites the file allocation table (FAT) so that the file no longer appears in the file system. If you delete 200 images, then the FAT gets rewritten 200 times. As you can imagine, that causes 200 times the wear to your CF card than a single format operation which just writes a single blank FAT to the card.

In short, formatting your card is by far preferable to deleting your files one by one. This is the case even if you use your camera, PC or Mac to delete all the files in one go, because in actual fact it treats the deletion of each file as a separate operation.

Amy
 
--
Gary - Casual hobbyist w/D300 and some zoom-zooms!
 
I reformat in-camera every time in my D200 and D80.
--
Roger (W6VZV)
Huntington Harbour, California
Surf City, USA

'I want to die peacefully, in my sleep, like my Grandfather...'
Not screaming, and in terror, like his passengers...'

 
Amypics said:
DStan said:
If you delete all files on your CF card after transferring them to
your PC, then you will not have any fragmentation issues. If you buy
quality CF cards and practice safe hardware removal then you will not
need to reformat your cards all the time. I reformat them once every
few months. I remember not reformatting one of my Lexar CF cards on
my D70 for years and not had any problems. CF cards have a limited
number of times that you can write to them and reformatting the
entire card will reduce its lifetime, although I doubt that many of
use will take that many pictures on one card and reach this point.
Click to expand...
Actually, formatting REDUCES the number of write cycles on any memory
card. Flash memory cards have a finite number of times that each
memory location on the card can be written to. CF cards contain
memory controllers which perform wear levelling. What that means is
that every time you write data to the card, the card will save that
data in a different location each time in order to make sure that all
parts of the card are "worn out" equally.

When you delete an image file from your card, the data doesn't get
removed from the card. The computer or camera just rewrites the file
allocation table (FAT) so that the file no longer appears in the file
system. If you delete 200 images, then the FAT gets rewritten 200
times. As you can imagine, that causes 200 times the wear to your CF
card than a single format operation which just writes a single blank
FAT to the card.

In short, formatting your card is by far preferable to deleting your
files one by one. This is the case even if you use your camera, PC or
Mac to delete all the files in one go, because in actual fact it
treats the deletion of each file as a separate operation.

Amy
Click to expand...
That depends on the format operation. Some formats touch every sector, that's why it takes a long time to format a harddrive. You can quick format a floppy which may not always work, not sure if you can do so for other media.
--
Stan ;o()



In the spirit of Occam’s Razor one should embrace the less complicated formulation or simply put, less is more.
http://standavidson.com/post/Birds
 
Theoretically, it's better to format than to delete because the invisible hierarchy tree of the card (the info that keeps tracks of which information is where on the chip) gets wiped during the formatting, and subsequently there is less opportunity for confusion/corruption. I recently saw some troublesome signs with two 4Gb Kingston cards that my assistant uses: creation dates of files didn't match the creation dates of folders (the difference was literally decades), and I asked her if she deletes or reformats. She told me she deletes. "Not anymore," I said.

I believe you're right -- most people will do fine never (or rarely) formatting their cards. But why take the chance? As photographers, we ARE our data. My business would suffer a severe setback (lost revenue, damaged reputation) if I lost crucial images. I'm anal about backing up my shoots literally five or six times, and I don't want to take any chances with the original integrity of the data either.

Formatting is dirt-cheap insurance.

deuxcent
Steve Bingham said:
Never have and never a problem. This includes past ownership of two
Fuji S2, two Kodak DSLR/n, two D2x, one D200, one D300, my son's
D200, my other son's D300, and my wife's D50. I just delete the files
after I load them onto the computer - with the computer. Never a
problem. Perhaps formatting would be better, but why?
--
Steve Bingham
http://www.dustylens.com
http://www.ghost-town-photography.com
Click to expand...
 
I reformat the cards after each download to the computer, although if the images are particularly valuable to me for some reason, I will make sure they are saved to at least one other place--a backup hard drive or a CD or DVD.

I do this because I worry less about the risk of losing images due to problems after downloading to the computer and more about the frustration of starting to shoot with a card and realizing that I forgot to clear the card, and suddenly I have to stop and protect the ones I've just shot, and delete the rest, or sacrifice the new to speed up the process by reformatting at that point. I've lost good images by locking and deleting the wrong shots....but never by reformatting after the download.

--
D Brown in Los Angeles
http://www.pbase.com/debunix
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix
 
Thanks to everyone who replied on this - I learned a lot and was interested in the points raised by Deuxcent and Amypics.

Final point on this:

Is it better to format using the D300, or is it just as good to do it as the final stage on your PC?

The latter would suit me, but if someone wants to tell me that the D300 does it a different way from Windows, that would be interesting.

Up until now, I have always "Moved" my files from card -> PC. I realise now that this entails some risk (though in 4 years of using SD and CF cards I've never lost an image or had a corrupted card). I'm happy to start doing a "Copy" instead, then finish with a format - just interested in the best place.

Using the PC would be smoother workflow, especially if I'm handling multiple cards and only putting one straight back into the D300.

--
Colin Malsingh
-------------------
http://www.pbase.com/cmalsingh
 
Adrian Seah said:
Guess what after 20-30 shots during a wedding and the 4 gigs card
says full. The reason being that I use a Nikon system and she uses a
Canon cam and was not able to see my file which was still on the
card. Formatting also ensure all the data is erase as I some time
use them as external harddisk to transfer data.
Click to expand...
So then it's a GOOD thing the card wasn't formatted, right? There still being 3 gigs of photos from you on there?

To the OP: This example shows why I DON'T format my card unless I have a specific reason. Don't want to risk deleting files that I haven't copied yet. My workflow is to "move" files (not copy) from the CF card. This means that the operating system will first copy the file and then when the copy succeeds delete the original.

I don't believe in the problem of fragmentation or corrupting the FAT. That was a problem 15 years ago but nowadays the low-level device drivers are much less buggy. I do think that cards can get corrupted, but I think it's more a chance of a random bit falling over than having to do with not reformatting.

Eric
--
http://www.lumenssolutions.com/photography/
 
Yes I do. Is there a reason to not format every time? It is really easy on the D300.

Mark
 
Bmark said:
Yes I do. Is there a reason to not format every time? It is really
easy on the D300.

Mark
Click to expand...
I agree, but I never format a card until I have backed up my data. With a D200 or a D300 it is just easy and the fastest way to clear a card.

The only card I have had "fail" was one I loaned a friend and he formated the card in his Mac (OS9) and my old Nikon 995 wouldn't aknowledge the card. I know now if I reformated the card in my PC it would have worked. He replaced the card anyway, we both started formating in camera.

Tom
 
Always format the card in your camera. Not just any camera, even if it's the same brand or model -- the camera that you will be using the card in.

Don't use your computer. If you do, you get kind of a three-way conversation going between three devices -- PC, camera, card. (And especially with Windows, who knows?) Letting just two devices communicate is simpler and holds less chance for confusion/corruption.

99% of the time, you should have no trouble either way, but it's the 1% that's killing.

deuxcent
CMalsingh said:
Thanks to everyone who replied on this - I learned a lot and was
interested in the points raised by Deuxcent and Amypics.

Final point on this:

Is it better to format using the D300, or is it just as good to do it
as the final stage on your PC?

The latter would suit me, but if someone wants to tell me that the
D300 does it a different way from Windows, that would be interesting.

Up until now, I have always "Moved" my files from card -> PC. I
realise now that this entails some risk (though in 4 years of using
SD and CF cards I've never lost an image or had a corrupted card).
I'm happy to start doing a "Copy" instead, then finish with a format
  • just interested in the best place.
Using the PC would be smoother workflow, especially if I'm handling
multiple cards and only putting one straight back into the D300.

--
Colin Malsingh
-------------------
http://www.pbase.com/cmalsingh
Click to expand...
 
DStan said:
That depends on the format operation. Some formats touch every
sector, that's why it takes a long time to format a harddrive. You
can quick format a floppy which may not always work, not sure if you
can do so for other media.
Click to expand...
Under windows, you can quick format most if not all media.

More importantly, the Nikon in-camera format is roughly equivalent to a quick format.

If you attach the card to a computer and format there, you may have a choice of quick or full formats. I wouldn't never recommend a full format unless you strongly suspect some kind of card problem and you actually WANT to give it a hard demanding test.

The in-camera (two button) format is fast, safe, easy, won't wear out your card, but helps reduce the risk of problems. There's no reason to not do it every time.
 
--
Steve

 
deuxcent said:
Always format the card in your camera. Not just any camera, even if
it's the same brand or model -- the camera that you will be using the
card in.

Don't use your computer. If you do, you get kind of a three-way
conversation going between three devices -- PC, camera, card. (And
especially with Windows, who knows?) Letting just two devices
communicate is simpler and holds less chance for confusion/corruption.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I don't follow the explanation.

In the days of formatting floppy disks, you had the problems that different disk drives might have slightly different mechnical alignment, so might not read disks the same. However I don't see how this applies to a solid state memory device.

Please excuse me if I'm missing something fundamental - is there actually any difference to the way a D300 formats a CF card to the way that Windows (or for that matter a Mac) does?

--
Colin Malsingh
-------------------
http://www.pbase.com/cmalsingh
 
CMalsingh said:
Please excuse me if I'm missing something fundamental - is there
actually any difference to the way a D300 formats a CF card to the
way that Windows (or for that matter a Mac) does?
Click to expand...
Yes, there will be some tiny and mainly insignificant details. It's probably a non-issue if the card is used only with modern devices. But the risk of problems does increase if a card is shared with an older device.

The FAT file system has been through several iterations over the years. You may recall some of the old limitations... 8.3 filenames, 2GB max partition size etc.

So, we've had multiple standards, multiple (different) implementations of those standards, non-standard extensions to those standards, errors and ommissions within the standards, and bugs in various versions of the implementations of those standards. Guess what? There have been bugs and incompatibilities at numerous times.

Right now things are pretty stable and most of the popular current devices play together pretty nicely. But throw an older devices into the mix and your chances of errors increase substantially.

More than you ever wanted to know about FAT here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_allocation_table
 
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