Compact Flash Card Abuse

[tneumann]

Delete pics one by one or reformat card?
Which is less abusive on the card? Anyone know?
Thanks
t

[Ted Allen]

I have an SD card that has been loaded and deleted hundreds of times and it still works fine.

When I am done with the pics on the card I just delete the whole thing all at once.

I hope this helps.?

[tneumann]

So do I...but do you tell the camera to "reformat" CF card?

I was just wondering if it is hard on the card...I'm googling now...

Much easier to reformat than to delete 100 pics...that is the other reason I'm asking...cuz I'm lazy.
t

[Ted Allen]

Originally Posted by tneumann

So do I...but do you tell the camera to "reformat" CF card?

I was just wondering if it is hard on the card...I'm googling now...

Much easier to reformat than to delete 100 pics...that is the other reason I'm asking...cuz I'm lazy.
t

NO. I use a USB card reader, and when I am done I just delete the file and it erases everything on the card.

A full card (maybe 150+ pics) takes only seconds to delete.

[A Dan Leleika]

Originally Posted by tneumann

Delete pics one by one or reformat card?
Which is less abusive on the card? Anyone know?
Thanks
t

Tony, I know this by experience. Reformat and delete all at once. When you delete pictures one by one it actually puts a blank space (hole) on the disk and nothing else is recorded on that spot. I used to delete pics one at a time but then lost a 64mb card that is now unusable. Since I started reformatting all at once, I have not had any problems,

[Kevin P. Williams]

mine has a delete all feature

[tneumann]

Thank you thank you ......
I agree after reading some research on Google....better for the media..thanks again.

[William A. Poole]

my brother-in-law is a photographer by trade - he says to alway re-format, otherwise you are always leaving some sort of "dangler" on the chip, which can corrupt your entire file. I found this out the hard way!

[bemelander]

Tony,
Not sure which is the best but my camera offers 3 options, Camera on shutter cover closed I can delete all, delete individual pictures, camera on shutter cover open I can only format card.
I use the delete all option and have done this hundreds of times with no problems. I do carry an extra card in case of problems or if I fill a card.
What William is saying does make sense, maybe your users manual could help.


Bill

[Mark H. Roe]

Go to ebay and check out the SD 1 Gig cards. I have bought 2 of them for less then $50.00 apiece. I have taken over 300+ photos and still had alot of room. SD recommends that you format.

[Alex A. Krenvalk, Jr]

I know a good program image recovery. Flash Recovery Toolbox may repair damaged photos from SD card, CF card, Digital camera and another.

[David A. Andersen]

"cut" "Paste to a file folder".
Most of everything is off of the card except the cameras files.
No need to format. I'm working on 11 years on one of my cards.

[ntoll]

Originally Posted by bemelander

What William is saying does make sense, maybe your users manual could help.

What William said actually makes a lot of sense. A flash card works much like the hard drive on your computer. You take a picture and the camera stores that file on the flash card. The problem is that it does not look for a space big enough to hold the whole file. It just drops it anywhere. What did not fit in that space, gets placed somewhere else. In computers, this is referred to as fragmenting and can impair performance.

When you delete a file, it is still there. The space is merely marked open for use. Formatting erases everything on the drive and makes it like it came from the factory.

[lcapaul]

Originally Posted by mroe

Go to ebay and check out the SD 1 Gig cards. I have bought 2 of them for less then $50.00 apiece. I have taken over 300+ photos and still had alot of room. SD recommends that you format.

If you go to Ebay for SD Cars look for the Scandisk Extreme III, they load a lot faster than the Scandisk II's, especilly if you are using them in a Pocket PC with InspectVue.

[bdoles2]

Originally Posted by dandersen

"cut" "Paste to a file folder".
Most of everything is off of the card except the cameras files.
No need to format. I'm working on 11 years on one of my cards.

Same here...I use both CF and SD. Have taken thousands of pictures and never had any problems, and no formats (yet)

Tigerdirect has 4G SD for $50, 2G for less than $20.