To format or not to format?, that is the question.

Tight Fart

Tight Fart

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Richard
Edit My Images
Yes
I've read that some people advise downloading your pics (to several places etc) then format the card?? why?
I download my pics to the home pc, my laptop and an external hard drive, I then delete all the so so pics (most of them) but if I have one that I class as a favorite I keep it on the card.
Is there any advantage in not doing that, it's quite nice looking back at a few favorite photos on the camera while there's nothing else going on.
 
I believe that a formatted card is "cleaner" with all possible fragments removed & therefore maximum space available.
 
Always format the card. Deleting doesn't delete in the way most people would think.
 
Sometimes I delete, maybe one in four times I format, so it gets done regularly.
I've never had a problem with these current cards.

I wouldn't dream of only ever deleting, that's asking for mysterious trouble down the line...
 
I ALWAYS format.

Perhaps none of my images are good enough for me to want to keep looking at them over and over :D
 
I'm not fussed about space, I use 16gb cards and if I leave 50/60 photos left on them the space won't bother me.
I understand that when you delete something you merely tell the index there's nothing there, but then you can recover files from formatted hard drives so that's not a lot different.
Are photos likely to be corrupted by being written on a card that hasn't been formatted?
If so could someone post one that that has happened to?
 
I format more out of habbit that anything else.
Started doing it when i realised windows doesnt delete the folders when deleting the files in the transfer wizard, not sure wether the camera would though.
 
Tight Fart said:
I'm not fussed about space, I use 16gb cards and if I leave 50/60 photos left on them the space won't bother me.
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I've had a problem or two with 8gb cards and now only use 2 or 4 gb ones as a bit of a security thing, as I know I won't back up as much as I should!

I always format.
 
Tight Fart said:
I'm not fussed about space, I use 16gb cards and if I leave 50/60 photos left on them the space won't bother me.
I understand that when you delete something you merely tell the index there's nothing there, but then you can recover files from formatted hard drives so that's not a lot different.
Are photos likely to be corrupted by being written on a card that hasn't been formatted?
If so could someone post one that that has happened to?
Click to expand...

my understanding from a non technical pov is that deleting is simply that, removing the data, leaving a 'shadow' if you like where the picture used to be that can cause problems with any image the camera then tries to write into the same space.

formatting rewrites the file system afresh, and whilst still not totally fool proof, is a better, safer option generally.


however, those issues aside, what I want to know is WHY on earth you are leaving pictures on a card to 'flick through when you have nothing to do'? If you have time to do that while out with the camera, then you are not 'looking' or 'seeing' the next shot! :p
 
Formatting doesn't necessarily render data unrecoverable, to do that the drive has to be completely overwritten with data several times for data on there to become unreadable, and even then tough forensics utilities could probably still recover stuff. Just take a look at what Steve Gibson's amazing utility SpinRite can do.

Back to the point, I never format any memory device if I don't need to. The only time I will is if I am giving it away (a quick format may well be quicker than deleting everything) or if there is a problem with the filesystem that requires me to format it.
 
I did not know any thing about formatting or even what it was untill I started reading this thread, then I was still unsure so just googled it.

Apparently it is advisable to format a card twice a year, obviously that can vary on how much you use it. I also read that you should format even a new card when you first put it in the camera and finally you should only format a card in the camera not on your computer.

If this information is a load of old , well you know, please let me know as this is only what I have just read. I did not know what formatting was 5 minutes ago:lol::lol::lol:

I am a newbie and I'm learning
 
indeed, formatting doesnt actually destroy the data to an unrecoverable state. to do that you would need to write to the disk random data, which is essentially what most disk erasers do.

as for my preferred method, i always drag and drop off using a card reader and windows explorer then format the card in camera.
 
Just deleteing files and leaving others on a card is eventually going to create fragmented images on it. Just as a Hard Drive needs to be de-fragmented to prevent it eventually throwing it's hands up in horror when it can no longer cope the same could happen with a card if left in a similar state. If you don't mind risking the possiblity of losing images then fine, myself, after I've transferred them to the PC and backups the card is reformatted.
 
artyman said:
Just deleteing files and leaving others on a card is eventually going to create fragmented images on it. Just as a Hard Drive needs to be de-fragmented to prevent it eventually throwing it's hands up in horror when it can no longer cope the same could happen with a card if left in a similar state. If you don't mind risking the possiblity of losing images then fine, myself, after I've transferred them to the PC and backups the card is reformatted.
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Where on earth did you get that from?

Sorry, but that sounds like the kind of hearsay I get on the phone at my work when someone tries to tell ME how to do MY job - total garbage.

FWIW, I never defragment my hard drives ever, and I haven't had any issues. File fragmentation being the source of errors is, as far as I am concerned, a horror story that never came true. Besides, there are other aspects that will cause a bottlekneck way before disk fragmentation does.

Honestly, people read far too much into these things.
 
trencheel303 said:
Where on earth did you get that from?

Sorry, but that sounds like the kind of hearsay I get on the phone at my work when someone tries to tell ME how to do MY job - total garbage.

FWIW, I never defragment my hard drives ever, and I haven't had any issues. File fragmentation being the source of errors is, as far as I am concerned, a horror story that never came true. Besides, there are other aspects that will cause a bottlekneck way before disk fragmentation does.

Honestly, people read far too much into these things.
Click to expand...

ive got servers at work that have never been defrag'd ;)
 
Hehehe... you probably already know this but I honestly think that 99% of "essential computer maintenance" is a load of rubbish, scaremongering to market software that people think is necessary. my computers never see any maintenance at all (except initial setup) and they're just fine...
 
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NTFS did change the ground rules but cards aren't NTFS! buy hey why should I be concerned they aren't my files
 
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Just to add another way for everyone to argue :) Some people take a photo of their contact details and more than one camera has been returned to their owner for this reason.

Based on your camera falling into the hands of an honest person of course. roflmao
 
Well I always down load images with a card reader ( used to just connect camera, then kept getting odd one or two corrupt images) then put card back into camera and format.
I haven't had any corrupt images since using this system.
 
neil_g said:
indeed, formatting doesnt actually destroy the data to an unrecoverable state. to do that you would need to write to the disk random data, which is essentially what most disk erasers do.

as for my preferred method, i always drag and drop off using a card reader and windows explorer then format the card in camera.
Click to expand...


Me too, though for years I deleted the card on my PC without any ill-effect, no idea why I listened to the "experts" on here!
 
neil_g said:
NTFS essentially threw maintenance out of the window as far as file systems go..

likewise, other than system updates none of my boxes get touched.
Click to expand...

I defrag my drives every 3 months or so, it's amazing how many wee red squares show up, prior to defrag, of these supposed fragment-free NTFS drives!
 
dont think I have ever defrag'd this laptop, though in fairness it did get formatted a few weeks ago and fresh windoze install. Don't store many files on it either. What does puzzle me though is this...MS are not averse to denying people simple pleasures like sitting watching a defrag while they feel all righteous and good, but if its unnecessary on NTFS, why are MS still including it as part of the system tools? :shrug:
 
it's not that it's unecessary, but that doing it doesn't bring any real world performance boost. there are far more other factors; seek time, spin up/down time, and IDE/Sata bus bottlekneck to name a few, that will come into play before fragmentation does. Linux and Apple filesystems fragment as well (yes they do - Google it ;) ) and I know for sure that Apple don't offer a defrag utility.

Realistically, a defrag utility makes about as much sense as the Internet Connection Wizard - practically none.

Artyman seems convinced that not formatting memory cards is going to lead to loss of data... I'll be sure to say when that happens... :suspect:
 
From what I remember, memory cards have a limited number of write cycles before they die, and a format basically only uses 1 of these cycles, whilst deleting uses more (one per file deleted).

Don't hold me on this, but this is what I remember reading somewhere.

There's also a performance increase from formatting, as when you delete a file, it only clears the entry on the file allocation table, and not the actual data, so when you come to write to it again, the previous data needs to be deleted, and the new data written. However if you format, the full file is deleted, so this does not need to be done next time you need to write to the card.
 
There's one very good reason to format that nobody has mentioned [unless I've missed it on skimming through].

It's a hell of a lot quicker than deleting.
 
So Diskeeper 8 is a total waste of money ? on XP that sets a timed schedule to defrag while you work, i know some of you will know this.
I never bought the said software but i installed it on my desktop and it sometimes slowed me down as it ran.
 
I load images onto PC using card-reader and Nikon Transfer, then format the cards.
Always.
I have three bodies and about 20 cards - occasionally they end up in different bodies to the ones they started out in.

Might not be strictly necessary nowadays but five or six years ago if you didn't do this your cards would eventually become unuseable or you'd mysteriously 'lose' or corrupt images when attempting to transfer.

A chap I worked with on Saturday night had two old-ish 512Mb cards fail on him (his wi-fi system required a card to be in the camera, but the wi-fi failed so we had to shoot one set onto the card itself) - both card readers on separate Macs wouldn't recognise the images, but when we put them back in the camera, there they were.
Formatted both cards and they worked on all platforms again.

By which time we'd sorted the wi-fi - by which I mean it still didn't work but I'd found a long-enough cable and we shot the rest of the night tethered...lol
 
You could always do what one lady who came to a camera basics class did/still does. When she filled up one SD card with images, she bought a new card. Bearing in mind she had a compact and probably used the smallest setting to get loads of pics on her card, that would have lasted her a while. Not, perhaps, the recommended route but if you're determined to 'look back' at your images, consider it as 'back up'.
 
trencheel303 said:
it's not that it's unecessary, but that doing it doesn't bring any real world performance boost. there are far more other factors; seek time, spin up/down time, and IDE/Sata bus bottlekneck to name a few, that will come into play before fragmentation does. Linux and Apple filesystems fragment as well (yes they do - Google it ;) ) and I know for sure that Apple don't offer a defrag utility.

Realistically, a defrag utility makes about as much sense as the Internet Connection Wizard - practically none.

Artyman seems convinced that not formatting memory cards is going to lead to loss of data... I'll be sure to say when that happens... :suspect:
Click to expand...

that was going be my next point/question, that Apple doesn't offer any kind of defrag system, or nothing obvious that I have found, and I pressume the file system can split file locations in a similar fashion, and of course, we all delete stuff randomly from our Macs.


I personally prefer formatting cards, as MisterE has pointed out, apart from anything else, its much quicker, but as mentioned by others, I have always done it in camera, not via the card reader/computer. There was someone round here a year or two ago that was having trouble with his cards, getting corrupt images, etc. After some questioning, turned out he was using computer to mass delete the images, then putting card straight back in camera. It was suggested he tried in camera formatting instead and after that, he reported no more issues. This purely anecdotal of course and could very easily have had other factors involved that didn't get mentioned. ;)

To balance that story, I also read round here that chimping at your LCD and deleting crap images as you go can also cause file corruption problems - to which I could only conclude that 99.9% of us do it and I know of no one reporting data loss yet :naughty:

MInd you, and the final bit of my ramble, despite Nikon's ever increasing NEF file sizes, I still limit my card sizes to 4GB and have several pieces of recovery software available, just in case you understand ;)
 
CGeezer said:
Just to add another way for everyone to argue :) Some people take a photo of their contact details and more than one camera has been returned to their owner for this reason.

Based on your camera falling into the hands of an honest person of course. roflmao
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All my cards have a small label on them with my name, house number and post code along with my mobile number. Far less faffing for any honest finder to go through to get the card back to me. Oh, there's also an offer for a reward on my receipt of the card. Never lost one, so don't know how well the labels work but I would be more inclined to return a card with a label on than look through someone else's photos on the off chance that there was an address on one pic.

I'm another who formats the card before every fresh use - 2 button format in camera. SanDisk's rescue pro can still retrieve any images if necessary provided the card hasn't been used in the meantime.
 
I used to only delete pictures from the card, and would keep my favourites to look at, never formatted, and I had no problems up until after 6-9 months of doing so with the same card.

Then I started getting random errors - one picture had a bottom black half, another had green lines through it, another had purple lines, yet another couldn't be downloaded from the camera. I panicked a little bit and thought there was something wrong with the camera, came here and searched, found a few posts about formatting and decided to give it a go in the hope it would work. And it did! It was the only thing I changed, so I'm sure it was the formatting that did it.

Since then I always format the card after I have transferred my pictures. I've not had any problems with corrupted images since, and this is almost a year ago now. So it works for me :)
 
i always format after i've transferred images to PC and Ext. HD.

it's just good housekeeping in my eyes.. i like to start my next shoot with clean and empty cards... simples.

on the flipside, it gets my goat when i see the mother in law's P&S camera crammed full of pictures from the last 3 years.. and still with space for another 650 shots! :bonk:
 
leftcurl said:
i always format after i've transferred images to PC and Ext. HD.

it's just good housekeeping in my eyes.. i like to start my next shoot with clean and empty cards... simples.

on the flipside, it gets my goat when i see the mother in law's P&S camera crammed full of pictures from the last 3 years.. and still with space for another 650 shots! :bonk:
Click to expand...

I'm the same as far as formatting is concerned.

Know what you mean about your mother in law. My father in law is the same, He has a 512mb card in his Sony compact and he never deletes anything. He's just about to fill it up (after a few years) and I'm going to send him a 4gb card that I have going spare (apparently his camera will take it). That will probably outlive him!! :lol:
 
Interesting to read these replies of actual real world experiences where lack of formatting has perhaps caused issues. Perhaps when I can actually get off my lazy butt and empty my CF card I will format it.
 
I format a card every time I put it in my camera.
You don't need to dig around in the menus on the D90 to do this (just hold down two buttons).

Once I have finished with a card, I remove it from the camera and lock it so that I can't accidentally wipe it before downloading to my PC / backup etc. Then I unlock it ready for next time.
 
I format, it's quicker.

Insert card to computer, software copies all files across.
Insert card into camera, format.
 
Arkady2 said:
I load images onto PC using card-reader and Nikon Transfer, then format the cards.
Always.
I have three bodies and about 20 cards - occasionally they end up in different bodies to the ones they started out in.

Might not be strictly necessary nowadays but five or six years ago if you didn't do this your cards would eventually become unuseable or you'd mysteriously 'lose' or corrupt images when attempting to transfer.

A chap I worked with on Saturday night had two old-ish 512Mb cards fail on him (his wi-fi system required a card to be in the camera, but the wi-fi failed so we had to shoot one set onto the card itself) - both card readers on separate Macs wouldn't recognise the images, but when we put them back in the camera, there they were.
Formatted both cards and they worked on all platforms again.

By which time we'd sorted the wi-fi - by which I mean it still didn't work but I'd found a long-enough cable and we shot the rest of the night tethered...lol
Click to expand...


I have 3 x 4gb sandisk CF cards, and suffer from the same problem as your guy here, I can connect the camera to get the images, but if I put the card into a reader the computer doesn't understand it. I also have 2 sets of folders on my cards, as I rocked over the 9999 filenumber count, so the camera has written a new folder to each card. I can't access the old folder from the camera, cos it doesn't recognise it.

I have never formatted any of the cards, so will do this soon to see if it solves my problems.
 
I always format once the images are backed up safely, then they go back in the bag ready for use.
 
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