Formatting SD card every time you delete images necessary?

[Impulses]

Wouldn't reformatting each time greatly increase the wear and tear on the SD ccard and so reduce its lifetime?

No, not if doing a quick format (which in-camera formatting always is). It basically just overwrites the file system index with a blank one. That's why images can often be recovered even from "formatted" media.

Ok.

But perhaps then it might be helkpful too once in a blue moon make the SD card completely blank by doing a computer format?

Quick format only deletes the file allocation table (FAT) at the start of the sd-card. Explained in a somewhat simplified way: if your card is nearly full, new files that don’t fit in one sequence due to their size are written in-between other files, the FAT tells the OS of the camera or computer, where they are to find to put them back together. This is the reason full storage devices like sd-cards, hard disks and ssds get slower. The fat is like a table of contents at the beginning of a book. This is the reason files can be restored on quick formatted disks or disks with a damaged FAT file. Most of the files are written in sequence, only there is no FAT that knows their location, like a book where the table of contents at the start is removed. If you delete a file, only the entry in the table of contents will be deleted, so that the OS can write on this location again if necessary. This leads to a slower speed on a disk often used, because now there are empty spaces in between other files that get filled, so if you take new pictures now, 1 is written at the start, 2 is written at the end, 3 in between the middle and the end. Some devices have intelligence that reorganises the memory, so that the files are written in sequence again and put together as long as there is enough space. It’s a long time ago, that I studied this.

I’m no expert, but isn’t FAT (file allocation table) a bit last century and from the world of windows and spinning drives?

Always keen to learn more about such things

exFAT is still widely used for SSD and removable media and it's the replacement for FAT32/16/etc. There's still a file allocation table regardless of which specific system is used. This hasn't stopped being a thing, so to speak, what did change ifms the way flash media handle stuff vs HDDs... It's not necessarily all written continuously for a variety of reasons, but deleting stuff randomly can still upset the media for similar reasons as it would a HDD.

It really shouldn't make a big difference whether you quick format the card (in camera or otherwise) or whether you grab all the comments in a file manager and delete them, the thread seems to be getting bogged down in that... What you don't wanna do is frequently delete stuff at random but leave others behind. Copying back a camera setting backup file after formatting or emptying a card is no big deal.

It's not entirely clear to me what else OP is trying to copy back to his card after every time he empties it...

 

[GodSpeaks]

Been doing it since forever. Plus I ALWAYS format in camera before starting another shoot.

On those rare occasions I have had an issue with an SD card, I run the card through the SD Card Format Utility on my computer, then reformat in camera. That will usually resolve any problems. If it doesn't I would bin the card (never had to yet).

 

[jhunna]

Been doing it since forever. Plus I ALWAYS format in camera before starting another shoot.

On those rare occasions I have had an issue with an SD card, I run the card through the SD Card Format Utility on my computer, then reformat in camera. That will usually resolve any problems. If it doesn't I would bin the card (never had to yet).

This!

 

[ray_burnimage]

Been doing it since forever. Plus I ALWAYS format in camera before starting another shoot.

On those rare occasions I have had an issue with an SD card, I run the card through the SD Card Format Utility on my computer, then reformat in camera. That will usually resolve any problems. If it doesn't I would bin the card (never had to yet).

This!

Agreed … simples!

 

[AlephNull]

Wouldn't reformatting each time greatly increase the wear and tear on the SD ccard and so reduce its lifetime?

Absolutely not.

Deleting the times individually involves more writing to the card than the standard "quick format". If you delete the images one by one it means a write for every delete; the quick format writes an empty directory structure over the top - one hit.

It guarantees you have a clean fresh directory structure to write your next images into. And a clean empty "image database" because it's a Sony camera.

The other potential issue with individual deletes is fragmentation - because the files vary in size, you get the blocks of the files scattered.

 

[indigoshrine]

While I am using the Sony a7III, this probably applies to most models.

Since getting the unit I had made it a best practice to reformat the SD card whenever I wanted to clear up storage space. So whenever it was getting somewhat full, I would connect it to my PC, copy my images to the local HDD, then format the card inside the camera. As this would also delete the M1-M4 settings, I would keep a local copy of my 'PRIVATE' folder around which I manually put onto the drive again after formatting.

This is of course a lot of overhead, especially since one needs to manually copy back the PRIVATE folder to not lose certain settings. The reason I am doing this is because it was officially recommended by Sony. But over time and getting more confident with the camera, I am increasingly wondering whether this is just exaggerated and one can easily just delete files off the SD card in the PC, then put the card back in and not worry about reformatting on a frequent basis.

I have done this a few times too and not noticed any problems. What is still holding me back from skipping this step for good is that I do not know if Sony might create some internal library/index file so when you remove/modify stuff off-camera on your PC, it might lead to issues. I definitely do not want to risk ever losing data just because of this.

But if several other users here have long term experience not doing this and can confirm this is not a problem, I would feel encouraged enough to also drop this task for good.

Your process seems overly complicated. I shoot wildlife, so I'll often shoot several hundred shots in an outing, sometimes thousands. I take the card out of my camera, put it in a card reader, review the files with FastRawViewer and only copy files that I plan to convert from RAW to my laptop. I then process the images, put the card back in the camera and reformat it. All of the EXIF data stays with the files.

Reformatting is so fast and easy, I see no reason why one wouldn't want to do it. Deleting files manually seems like a waste of time.

Storage is cheap. If you want a temporary holding place, buy a Solid State USB drive.

Storage is not the problem here. The problem is that everytime I format the SD card in the camera, I lose my M1-M4 settings. In order to retain them, I need to manually backup the PRIVATE folder and put it onto the SD Card after reformatting.

So I simply want to skip formatting and just move my files from SD card to PC for further processing (or deletion), then keep working on the SD card with the PRIVATE folder and all settings untouched. I would still format it when I feel there are performance issues, but it would be much less frequent than now.

 

[Impulses]

Why not just copy the 4 files for M1-4 after a quick format?

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00203863

Either method is fine IMO tho, the existing files aren't overwritten when you delete them nor when you quick format. As long as you're deleting everything and not leaving stuff behind the card/controller should stay well behaved. AFAIK you'd only run into trouble (potentially) when you delete piecemeal and leave a mess for the controller to deal without having the space to do it's thing.

 

[AlephNull]

While I am using the Sony a7III, this probably applies to most models.

Since getting the unit I had made it a best practice to reformat the SD card whenever I wanted to clear up storage space. So whenever it was getting somewhat full, I would connect it to my PC, copy my images to the local HDD, then format the card inside the camera. As this would also delete the M1-M4 settings, I would keep a local copy of my 'PRIVATE' folder around which I manually put onto the drive again after formatting.

This is of course a lot of overhead, especially since one needs to manually copy back the PRIVATE folder to not lose certain settings. The reason I am doing this is because it was officially recommended by Sony. But over time and getting more confident with the camera, I am increasingly wondering whether this is just exaggerated and one can easily just delete files off the SD card in the PC, then put the card back in and not worry about reformatting on a frequent basis.

I have done this a few times too and not noticed any problems. What is still holding me back from skipping this step for good is that I do not know if Sony might create some internal library/index file so when you remove/modify stuff off-camera on your PC, it might lead to issues. I definitely do not want to risk ever losing data just because of this.

But if several other users here have long term experience not doing this and can confirm this is not a problem, I would feel encouraged enough to also drop this task for good.

Your process seems overly complicated. I shoot wildlife, so I'll often shoot several hundred shots in an outing, sometimes thousands. I take the card out of my camera, put it in a card reader, review the files with FastRawViewer and only copy files that I plan to convert from RAW to my laptop. I then process the images, put the card back in the camera and reformat it. All of the EXIF data stays with the files.

Reformatting is so fast and easy, I see no reason why one wouldn't want to do it. Deleting files manually seems like a waste of time.

Storage is cheap. If you want a temporary holding place, buy a Solid State USB drive.

Storage is not the problem here. The problem is that everytime I format the SD card in the camera, I lose my M1-M4 settings. In order to retain them, I need to manually backup the PRIVATE folder and put it onto the SD Card after reformatting.

So I simply want to skip formatting and just move my files from SD card to PC for further processing (or deletion), then keep working on the SD card with the PRIVATE folder and all settings untouched. I would still format it when I feel there are performance issues, but it would be much less frequent than now.

Wow - I think you might be the only person I've seen using the M1-M4 files.

Does the A7III have two card slots? I think it does.

If so, I'd be tempted to put the M1-M4 files on a small SD card (they are tiny files), write protect it, and then save all my images to a big SD card in the other slot. That way your images are never written to the card with your saved files on it.

 

[DirkPeh]

Wouldn't reformatting each time greatly increase the wear and tear on the SD ccard and so reduce its lifetime?

No, not if doing a quick format (which in-camera formatting always is). It basically just overwrites the file system index with a blank one. That's why images can often be recovered even from "formatted" media.

Ok.

But perhaps then it might be helkpful too once in a blue moon make the SD card completely blank by doing a computer format?

Quick format only deletes the file allocation table (FAT) at the start of the sd-card. Explained in a somewhat simplified way: if your card is nearly full, new files that don’t fit in one sequence due to their size are written in-between other files, the FAT tells the OS of the camera or computer, where they are to find to put them back together. This is the reason full storage devices like sd-cards, hard disks and ssds get slower. The fat is like a table of contents at the beginning of a book. This is the reason files can be restored on quick formatted disks or disks with a damaged FAT file. Most of the files are written in sequence, only there is no FAT that knows their location, like a book where the table of contents at the start is removed. If you delete a file, only the entry in the table of contents will be deleted, so that the OS can write on this location again if necessary. This leads to a slower speed on a disk often used, because now there are empty spaces in between other files that get filled, so if you take new pictures now, 1 is written at the start, 2 is written at the end, 3 in between the middle and the end. Some devices have intelligence that reorganises the memory, so that the files are written in sequence again and put together as long as there is enough space. It’s a long time ago, that I studied this.

I’m no expert, but isn’t FAT (file allocation table) a bit last century and from the world of windows and spinning drives?

Always keen to learn more about such things

The basics remained the same, the newer systems like FAT32, exFAT, NTFS and the MacOS version just solved issues with files and storages becoming larger, added safety and security measures etc. Still there’s a table at the start of disks that tells the OS where to find your stuff.

 

[TomV1]

Wow - I think you might be the only person I've seen using the M1-M4 files.

Does the A7III have two card slots? I think it does.

If so, I'd be tempted to put the M1-M4 files on a small SD card (they are tiny files), write protect it, and then save all my images to a big SD card in the other slot. That way your images are never written to the card with your saved files on it.

From a sw engineer point of view, Sony should keep the M1-M4 files on the card when formatting it.

 

[ray_burnimage]

Wouldn't reformatting each time greatly increase the wear and tear on the SD ccard and so reduce its lifetime?

No, not if doing a quick format (which in-camera formatting always is). It basically just overwrites the file system index with a blank one. That's why images can often be recovered even from "formatted" media.

Ok.

But perhaps then it might be helkpful too once in a blue moon make the SD card completely blank by doing a computer format?

Quick format only deletes the file allocation table (FAT) at the start of the sd-card. Explained in a somewhat simplified way: if your card is nearly full, new files that don’t fit in one sequence due to their size are written in-between other files, the FAT tells the OS of the camera or computer, where they are to find to put them back together. This is the reason full storage devices like sd-cards, hard disks and ssds get slower. The fat is like a table of contents at the beginning of a book. This is the reason files can be restored on quick formatted disks or disks with a damaged FAT file. Most of the files are written in sequence, only there is no FAT that knows their location, like a book where the table of contents at the start is removed. If you delete a file, only the entry in the table of contents will be deleted, so that the OS can write on this location again if necessary. This leads to a slower speed on a disk often used, because now there are empty spaces in between other files that get filled, so if you take new pictures now, 1 is written at the start, 2 is written at the end, 3 in between the middle and the end. Some devices have intelligence that reorganises the memory, so that the files are written in sequence again and put together as long as there is enough space. It’s a long time ago, that I studied this.

I’m no expert, but isn’t FAT (file allocation table) a bit last century and from the world of windows and spinning drives?

Always keen to learn more about such things

The basics remained the same, the newer systems like FAT32, exFAT, NTFS and the MacOS version just solved issues with files and storages becoming larger, added safety and security measures etc. Still there’s a table at the start of disks that tells the OS where to find your stuff.

Makes sense, thank you

 

[dcstep]

While I am using the Sony a7III, this probably applies to most models.

Since getting the unit I had made it a best practice to reformat the SD card whenever I wanted to clear up storage space. So whenever it was getting somewhat full, I would connect it to my PC, copy my images to the local HDD, then format the card inside the camera. As this would also delete the M1-M4 settings, I would keep a local copy of my 'PRIVATE' folder around which I manually put onto the drive again after formatting.

This is of course a lot of overhead, especially since one needs to manually copy back the PRIVATE folder to not lose certain settings. The reason I am doing this is because it was officially recommended by Sony. But over time and getting more confident with the camera, I am increasingly wondering whether this is just exaggerated and one can easily just delete files off the SD card in the PC, then put the card back in and not worry about reformatting on a frequent basis.

I have done this a few times too and not noticed any problems. What is still holding me back from skipping this step for good is that I do not know if Sony might create some internal library/index file so when you remove/modify stuff off-camera on your PC, it might lead to issues. I definitely do not want to risk ever losing data just because of this.

But if several other users here have long term experience not doing this and can confirm this is not a problem, I would feel encouraged enough to also drop this task for good.

Your process seems overly complicated. I shoot wildlife, so I'll often shoot several hundred shots in an outing, sometimes thousands. I take the card out of my camera, put it in a card reader, review the files with FastRawViewer and only copy files that I plan to convert from RAW to my laptop. I then process the images, put the card back in the camera and reformat it. All of the EXIF data stays with the files.

Reformatting is so fast and easy, I see no reason why one wouldn't want to do it. Deleting files manually seems like a waste of time.

Storage is cheap. If you want a temporary holding place, buy a Solid State USB drive.

Storage is not the problem here. The problem is that everytime I format the SD card in the camera, I lose my M1-M4 settings. In order to retain them, I need to manually backup the PRIVATE folder and put it onto the SD Card after reformatting.

So I simply want to skip formatting and just move my files from SD card to PC for further processing (or deletion), then keep working on the SD card with the PRIVATE folder and all settings untouched. I would still format it when I feel there are performance issues, but it would be much less frequent than now.

Sounds like there's something wrong with your camera. Have you installed the latest firmware?

 

[MyReality]

SD cards are inexpensive now, so I don't bother reformatting.

 

[Impulses]

SD cards are inexpensive now, so I don't bother reformatting.

You just buy new ones?

 

[DirkPeh]

SD cards are inexpensive now, so I don't bother reformatting.

You just buy new ones?

You didn’t ask me, but for a long time I did. But with V60 cards it becomes a bit expensive. I used it as a backup strategy, always copied the files to my ssd after shooting. When a card was full, I took it to a space away from my other storage. So in case everything else would went wrong, I'd have all my RAWs and jpgs on sd-cards. I think I'll stick with it and just buy V60 cards when really needed for video.

 

[ray_burnimage]

SD cards are inexpensive now, so I don't bother reformatting.

You just buy new ones?

You didn’t ask me, but for a long time I did. But with V60 cards it becomes a bit expensive. I used it as a backup strategy, always copied the files to my ssd after shooting. When a card was full, I took it to a space away from my other storage. So in case everything else would went wrong, I'd have all my RAWs and jpgs on sd-cards. I think I'll stick with it and just buy V60 cards when really needed for video.

Cheaper and easier to use external SSD's these days...

 

[dcstep]

SD cards are inexpensive now, so I don't bother reformatting.

You just buy new ones?

You didn’t ask me, but for a long time I did. But with V60 cards it becomes a bit expensive. I used it as a backup strategy, always copied the files to my ssd after shooting. When a card was full, I took it to a space away from my other storage. So in case everything else would went wrong, I'd have all my RAWs and jpgs on sd-cards. I think I'll stick with it and just buy V60 cards when really needed for video.

Cheaper and easier to use external SSD's these days...

Absolutely AND it's so much easier to search and work with a 2TB SSD, vs. a pile of sd-cards.




Also, you need off-site backup. I use Backblaze.com for cloud backup at a reasonable price.


Dave

 

[Impulses]

SD cards are inexpensive now, so I don't bother reformatting.

You just buy new ones?

You didn’t ask me, but for a long time I did. But with V60 cards it becomes a bit expensive. I used it as a backup strategy, always copied the files to my ssd after shooting. When a card was full, I took it to a space away from my other storage. So in case everything else would went wrong, I'd have all my RAWs and jpgs on sd-cards. I think I'll stick with it and just buy V60 cards when really needed for video.

Cheaper and easier to use external SSD's these days...

Yeah I don't quite see the point vs just moving an SSD elsewhere, and sync'ing stuff to it periodically, but I do shoot with faster cards for the buffer clearing time and wouldn't be wanna throwing money away like that every few months...

 

[MyReality]

I just buy new ones, but non of them are larger than 128 gb. I don't want to have a large one seize up or crash on me even though the chance is very small. I have 20 year old SD and CF cards that my cameras and PC card readers still read, that is better than some hard drives.

 

[MyReality]

SD cards are inexpensive now, so I don't bother reformatting.

You just buy new ones?

You didn’t ask me, but for a long time I did. But with V60 cards it becomes a bit expensive. I used it as a backup strategy, always copied the files to my ssd after shooting. When a card was full, I took it to a space away from my other storage. So in case everything else would went wrong, I'd have all my RAWs and jpgs on sd-cards. I think I'll stick with it and just buy V60 cards when really needed for video.

Cheaper and easier to use external SSD's these days...

Yeah I don't quite see the point vs just moving an SSD elsewhere, and sync'ing stuff to it periodically, but I do shoot with faster cards for the buffer clearing time and wouldn't be wanna throwing money away like that every few months...

SD cards are just another form of redundancy to me. My archive is a 12 TB($240) hard drive on my PC that I do not PP from. It has 3 primary folders: 1. All Jpeg files. 2. All RAW files and 3. All film scanned Jpeg files. All photo files are just the best ones after serious culling. Check the price of a 12 TB SSD card if you can find one.

I never take a PC, tablet or portable HD when I travel anywhere. I have never had a card fail on a trip. I used to sell prints from (1/2.3)" sensor cameras to my Mamiya 6x7.




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