Formating questune.

[DonA2]

A quick format takes seconds, a full format takes several minutes. Is a quick good enough for wiping a SD camera card ? What's the benefit of full format and should it be used on occasion or a waste of time ? A PC hard drive used for backups ?

 

[sygnus21]

If you're say wiping the drive to give to someone else is, yeah a full format. If you're keeping the card a quick format. I do a quick format since I'm keeping the card.

My two cents.

--
I was once asked if I were embarrassed for asking so many questions. Well, I replied, only a man who has nothing to learn should be embarrassed.

 

[jpegman]

As I understand it, a full format writes to all sectors and then reads them certifying the sector is good. A quick erase does just that - erases all the used sectors and assumes they're good.

So as was suggested for personal re-use a quick erase is all that needed usually. However, I occasionally do a full erase to ensure all the formatted sectors are good and can be written to and read.

If i was selling/lending the card to someone else, I would use an erase function (more thorough than a full format) to randomly write 1's and 0's multiple time to each sector across the entire card to ensure all my old data was gone!

Jpegman

 

[DonA2]

If you're say wiping the drive to give to someone else is, yeah a full format. If you're keeping the card a quick format. I do a quick format since I'm keeping the card.

My two cents.

Had a gut feeling this was it. Thanks.

 

[sygnus21]

No problem.

Peace

 

[DerKeyser]

A quick format takes seconds, a full format takes several minutes. Is a quick good enough for wiping a SD camera card ? What's the benefit of full format and should it be used on occasion or a waste of time ? A PC hard drive used for backups ?

The answers given are not entirely correct.

Quick Format overwrites the Filesystem Table on the Card/SSD/HDD with an empty table. Essentially it deletes all pointers to the files that are located on the card/disk. But the files are technically still there (just not named, placed in folders or indexed).

Full Format overwrites all cells/sectors on the card/disk with zeroes and then writes an empty Filesystem Table.

So the suggested solution to only use full format when lending or selling the card/disk is correct, but the reasoning is wrong - And the suggestion to use full format once in a while is also wrong.

This is because Flash Cards/SSD’s Storage cells can only take a limited number of writecycles, so doing a full format is just un-needed wear on your media - thereby shortening it’s life unnescessarily.

--
Happy Nikon Shooter
See my articles and galleries at: https://wolffmadsen.dk

 

[robert1955]

A quick format takes seconds, a full format takes several minutes. Is a quick good enough for wiping a SD camera card ? What's the benefit of full format and should it be used on occasion or a waste of time ? A PC hard drive used for backups ?

The answers given are not entirely correct.

Quick Format overwrites the Filesystem Table on the Card/SSD/HDD with an empty table. Essentially it deletes all pointers to the files that are located on the card/disk. But the files are technically still there (just not named, placed in folders or indexed).

Full Format overwrites all cells/sectors on the card/disk with zeroes and then writes an empty Filesystem Table.

So the suggested solution to only use full format when lending or selling the card/disk is correct, but the reasoning is wrong - And the suggestion to use full format once in a while is also wrong.

This is because Flash Cards/SSD’s Storage cells can only take a limited number of writecycles, so doing a full format is just un-needed wear on your media - thereby shortening it’s life unnescessarily.

id state devices [cards, ssd's] create a table of locations that are corrupted. If you do a full format, that table is deleted.

 

[sygnus21]

The answers given are not entirely correct.

The fact that we didn't deep dive does not make the answer incorrect. It just means we didn't rocket science out a simple answer ;-)

Perhaps you'd of been happy if we presented a dissertation worthy of a Nobel prize, but in the end it still would have been the same answer - quick format

 

[DerKeyser]

The answers given are not entirely correct.

The fact that we didn't deep dive does not make the answer incorrect. It just means we didn't rocket science out a simple answer ;-)

Perhaps you'd of been happy if we presented a dissertation worthy of a Nobel prize, but in the end it still would have been the same answer - quick format

True that ;-) Epic answer btw - like your sense of humor

 

[Joep van Steen]

As I understand it, a full format writes to all sectors and then reads them certifying the sector is good. A quick erase does just that - erases all the used sectors and assumes they're good.

So as was suggested for personal re-use a quick erase is all that needed usually. However, I occasionally do a full erase to ensure all the formatted sectors are good and can be written to and read.

If i was selling/lending the card to someone else, I would use an erase function (more thorough than a full format) to randomly write 1's and 0's multiple time to each sector across the entire card to ensure all my old data was gone!

Jpegman

With any flash based memory I strongly suggest to not sell or give away the device if the data on it is of any concern.

 

[Joep van Steen]

A quick format takes seconds, a full format takes several minutes. Is a quick good enough for wiping a SD camera card ? What's the benefit of full format and should it be used on occasion or a waste of time ? A PC hard drive used for backups ?

The answers given are not entirely correct.

Quick Format overwrites the Filesystem Table on the Card/SSD/HDD with an empty table. Essentially it deletes all pointers to the files that are located on the card/disk. But the files are technically still there (just not named, placed in folders or indexed).

Full Format overwrites all cells/sectors on the card/disk with zeroes and then writes an empty Filesystem Table.

Well, this the issue with flash based devices, you don't know all data has been overwritten. There is no direct relation between a sector and actual blocks used to store data like we used to more or less have with conventional hard disks.

So the suggested solution to only use full format when lending or selling the card/disk is correct, but the reasoning is wrong - And the suggestion to use full format once in a while is also wrong.

This is because Flash Cards/SSD’s Storage cells can only take a limited number of writecycles, so doing a full format is just un-needed wear on your media - thereby shortening it’s life unnescessarily.

Good point.

 

[Joep van Steen]

A quick format takes seconds, a full format takes several minutes. Is a quick good enough for wiping a SD camera card ? What's the benefit of full format and should it be used on occasion or a waste of time ? A PC hard drive used for backups ?

id state devices [cards, ssd's] create a table of locations that are corrupted. If you do a full format, that table is deleted.

Nope. Firmware will keep a table and host can not touch it.

 

[CAcreeks]

A quick format takes seconds, a full format takes several minutes. Is a quick good enough for wiping a SD camera card ? What's the benefit of full format and should it be used on occasion or a waste of time ? A PC hard drive used for backups ?

id state devices [cards, ssd's] create a table of locations that are corrupted. If you do a full format, that table is deleted.

When you say id state device, what is id? When I google "id state" all I get is Idaho.

Nope. Firmware will keep a table and host can not touch it.

I can believe that for SSD, but what about USB memory sticks and SD cards? I don't know where a microSD card would have enough firmware to maintain this table.

 

[Patco]

id state devices [cards, ssd's] create a table of locations that are corrupted. If you do a full format, that table is deleted.

When you say id state device, what is id? When I google "id state" all I get is Idaho.

I think it's missing the "Sol", i.e., "Solid state devices".

 

[Joep van Steen]

A quick format takes seconds, a full format takes several minutes. Is a quick good enough for wiping a SD camera card ? What's the benefit of full format and should it be used on occasion or a waste of time ? A PC hard drive used for backups ?

id state devices [cards, ssd's] create a table of locations that are corrupted. If you do a full format, that table is deleted.

When you say id state device, what is id? When I google "id state" all I get is Idaho.

I didn't say it, it's quoted from a previous message

Nope. Firmware will keep a table and host can not touch it.

I can believe that for SSD, but what about USB memory sticks and SD cards? I don't know where a microSD card would have enough firmware to maintain this table.

I think we had this discussion before. Firmware keeping a table does not mean it has to be stored in the actual firmware. It just reserves some memory to save this info. It has to keep several tables for book keeping actually. These areas are hidden from the host and can not be touched by the host either, they're not part of LBA address space. This is why assuming a full format somehow erases bad block tables is a wrong assumption.

--
Joep

 

[RDKirk]

This is because Flash Cards/SSD’s Storage cells can only take a limited number of writecycles, so doing a full format is just un-needed wear on your media - thereby shortening it’s life unnescessarily.

A card's life time is on the order of 100,000 write cycles up to a million write cycles, though.

 

[Mystery member]

A quick format takes seconds, a full format takes several minutes. Is a quick good enough for wiping a SD camera card ? What's the benefit of full format and should it be used on occasion or a waste of time ? A PC hard drive used for backups ?

Why do you want to "Wipe" your media? -Security or for a "Fresh start"?

I have only ever formatted SD cards in the camera, and have never had an error in many years with perhaps a dozen cameras.

It used to be standard practice when preparing a HDD to finish off with a full format, but it's a long time since I've had to fdisk etc. and format a drive. Now the OS setup looks after most of those details.

Storage media is so cheap these days that wiping in the interests of security is hardly justifiable. The last HDDs that I wanted to dispose of met their deaths courtesy of a large hammer, and I replaced them with new drives that were dirt cheap.

 

[Joep van Steen]

This is because Flash Cards/SSD’s Storage cells can only take a limited number of writecycles, so doing a full format is just un-needed wear on your media - thereby shortening it’s life unnescessarily.

A card's life time is on the order of 100,000 write cycles up to a million write cycles, though.

Where did you get those numbers?

EDIT: Found a source for this, seen end of my post.

I mean, one million I haven't seen mentioned before but TBH it's not like I am searching for them all the time.

Still, a search gives me for example from the Kingston website:

For Multi-Level Cell (MLC) Flash, up to 3000 write cycles per physical sector based on current lithography process (19nm and 20nm) at the time of this writing. For Single-Level Cell (SLC) Flash, up to 30,000 write cycles per physical sector. For Triple-level Cell (TLC), up to 500 write cycles per physical sector. Lithography of the Flash Memory Die plays a key role in cell endurance and decreases as the size of the die gets smaller. - Note: judging by the 19 - 20 nm lithography being 'current' process this article is slightly outdated.

This is probably a generic (not Kingston product specific) statement. MLC and TLC are probably more common than SLC (most expensive). Note they specify sectors, much of the info seems to be referring to cells which I think is rather significant (I think it's where the 100.000 number comes from).

So. maybe the number is higher per single cell, let's say 100.000 cycles for SLC but as soon as a few cells within one sector 'die' practically it means the entire sector is unusable. When ECC can no longer correct I guess and this in turn depends on length of ECC bits.

So people often quote numbers they've picked up somewhere without context. It's hard to determine what they mean without that context.

Now assume MLC. A full format writes to each and every LBA addressable sector, so that's one write cycle for each of those sectors of the 3000 write cycle limit. For TLC chips a full format is an even bigger 'investment'.

Just thinking out loud. Genuinely interested in holes in my reasoning.

1.000.000 write cycle claim: There's a huge discrepancy between write cycles reported by manufacturers and observational data. I have seen the 1000000 number on some occasions, referring to the observational data. Unfortunately I have been unable to find the source for this claim, nor the test parameters (sequential writes or not, over-provisioning etc.). Also articles use write cycles for cells and blocks very inconclusively even in one sentence.

--
Joep

 

[RDKirk]

This is because Flash Cards/SSD’s Storage cells can only take a limited number of writecycles, so doing a full format is just un-needed wear on your media - thereby shortening it’s life unnescessarily.

A card's life time is on the order of 100,000 write cycles up to a million write cycles, though.

Where did you get those numbers?

EDIT: Found a source for this, seen end of my post.

I mean, one million I haven't seen mentioned before but TBH it's not like I am searching for them all the time.

Still, a search gives me for example from the Kingston website:

For Multi-Level Cell (MLC) Flash, up to 3000 write cycles per physical sector based on current lithography process (19nm and 20nm) at the time of this writing. For Single-Level Cell (SLC) Flash, up to 30,000 write cycles per physical sector. For Triple-level Cell (TLC), up to 500 write cycles per physical sector. Lithography of the Flash Memory Die plays a key role in cell endurance and decreases as the size of the die gets smaller. - Note: judging by the 19 - 20 nm lithography being 'current' process this article is slightly outdated.

This is probably a generic (not Kingston product specific) statement. MLC and TLC are probably more common than SLC (most expensive). Note they specify sectors, much of the info seems to be referring to cells which I think is rather significant (I think it's where the 100.000 number comes from).

So. maybe the number is higher per single cell, let's say 100.000 cycles for SLC but as soon as a few cells within one sector 'die' practically it means the entire sector is unusable. When ECC can no longer correct I guess and this in turn depends on length of ECC bits.

So people often quote numbers they've picked up somewhere without context. It's hard to determine what they mean without that context.

Now assume MLC. A full format writes to each and every LBA addressable sector, so that's one write cycle for each of those sectors of the 3000 write cycle limit. For TLC chips a full format is an even bigger 'investment'.

Just thinking out loud. Genuinely interested in holes in my reasoning.

1.000.000 write cycle claim: There's a huge discrepancy between write cycles reported by manufacturers and observational data. I have seen the 1000000 number on some occasions, referring to the observational data. Unfortunately I have been unable to find the source for this claim, nor the test parameters (sequential writes or not, over-provisioning etc.). Also articles use write cycles for cells and blocks very inconclusively even in one sentence.

The question is: How many times in the real world will a photographer format the SD card before upgrading to a larger or more advanced card?

If the number is in the thousands or even several hundred, then full formatting with every use is not a practical concern.

 

[Joep van Steen]

Well, that's slightly moving the goalposts because I was addressing write cycles claim, but okay a relevant question I suppose.

A few hundred cycles doesn't sound like an awful lot. It's not just formatting a photographer does, is it? I mean, it's not the only thing adding to the count down but it's just an avoidable extra.