The reason why people are advised to format in camera as opposed to in pc is to avoid the end user having to know to use FAT 12/16/32 (and cluster size) for whatever that camera/card's particular flavor of vodka is. In-camera formats are quicker in that all they do is overwrite the existing file allocation table(s)/directory structure and that there's less labor involved (moving the card back and forth, clicking through the options or typing at the cli on the PC). A (non- quick) PC format does a chkdsk for bad sectors. Time consuming and pointless for flash media. Quick-format, whether pc or in-camera, is largely write-speed-bound. In-camera "Delete all" takes longer than formatting due to the fact the camera is serially deleting each directory entry, the process of which is potentially a significant number of writes. Neither a "delete all" or "format" inside a camera actually removes user data, be it image or otherwise, from the card. It's all still there, but with no pointers to tell an OS what blocks make up what files; blocks are overwritten at some point when needed. I do not see how formatting twice in succession would have any discernible effect, other than time consumption. That's really a "pregnancy" question: either one formatted it or they didn't. Multiple passes won't make it any "more formatted." It won't hurt much either since life cycles of NAND-based media are quite robust and wear-leveling with modern flash memory means you won't end up with your FATs and directory structures being re-written over and over again on the same block.
In personal use, I've never had any memory card go bad. In work use, over the past ten years, I have had many type III hard drives and many CF cards go bad. I'm not sure how many pictures our shooters take each year; never tried to count, but if I had to take a WAG, maybe 35k? Several of my cameras now use SD and none have yet failed internally but this is the first year of SD being in use; one fell victim to a careless handler; the card still worked, but was essentially finished due to the cracked chassis. I fear this will happen more often, as SD cards are fragile compared to CF cards. The hard drive failures were always a head crash. With the CF cards, some times it's general wear and tear from the frequent removal/insertion, but five or so have failed due to some sort of internal corruption. Flash memories are supposed to automagically mark blocks as "bad" when they encounter troublesome ones (aforementioned wear-leveling), but in practice, as soon as a card gives us any beef, I toss it. It's remarkable how many failed shortly after warranty. I'm sure someone knows the axiom for that phenomena. The current workflow for our shooters is to do a format in camera because it's fastest, though I know that some do an erase all instead, or erase the images while the card is in the reader attached to the pc. In the end I think it works out to six of one, half dozen of the other regarding the effect on the card. Michael Chan On Dec 3, 2006, at 9:55 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote: > I've made perhaps 70,000 exposures in digital cameras since 2002. > I've used both delete all and format, with no pattern. Never lost an > image, have not had a card go bad or be unreadable yet. > > G > > On Dec 3, 2006, at 9:12 PM, Shel Belinkoff wrote: > >> According to the various articles I read, it's suggested to never >> format >> your card in the computer, only in the camera in which it will be >> used. >> Amongst all the articles and comments that I read, someone - I >> forget who - >> suggested formatting twice. This was someone whose work and >> expertise I >> generally respect - of course, I can no longer recall who - maybe >> Bruce >> Fraser? - and so I just got in the habit of formatting twice. NBD, >> especially with a fast card matched to the capabilitiy of the >> istDS. Do I >> need to do it? Perhaps not, but it makes me feel good and secure, >> so I do >> it. And maybe it does help, and maybe some day it will save an >> image or >> two, so for the expenditure of an additional 1.5 seconds per day, >> I'll >> format twice. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
