On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Igor Roshchin<[email protected]> wrote: > > 2009/7/18 Bob W wrote: >> Your question "why there's any need to format cards in the first place?" is >> a good one, though. I don't see any benefit at all in having 2 functions >> that are effectively the same - Delete All, and Format. There is no benefit >> to having the Delete All function, so it should either be dropped or just >> treated as a synonym of Format. > > While I never tested it myself, I suspect if you "protect" some photos > (such a option is available on *ist DS) they won't be deleted > with "Delete All", but will be deleted if you were to format the card. > > What I've tried, however, is when I have other, non-Pentax files on the > card, *ist DS deletes them if I do "Delete All". > > I format the card every time, even though I suspect it is a > superstition. > Once with a DS, once with an old point-n-shoot Kodak, I had strange > situations when a single file had problem being read after > I was writing files to the card (SD and CF, respectively) on a computer, > via card reader. I wrote to a card many times after without a problem, > but that was enough for me to have formatting as a part of the routine. > > P. J. Alling wrote: >> I believe that all cameras will reformat cards that they see as >> unformatted automatically. I say this because I've put brand new cards >> into the K20D, *ist-D, and Ds and the minute that they are accessed the >> card has the proper directory structure. The K20 *ist-D and *ist-Ds all >> upon having brand new cards inserted, created the DCMI and 100Pentx sub >> directories. If the card wasn't formated it would have done be at that >> time. I've never had to do an initial format on any SD or CF card. > > Don't mix two things: > formatting the card (which erases FAT information) and > initializing the card for the camera needs (which creates > camera-specific directories on the card). > When you tell camera to "Format", both things happen. > > When you get a brand-new card, it is already formatted. The camera > just creates its directories. (AFAIK, this happens when it records the > first image, not when you just pop it in, - at least in the cameras > I've used.) > > While I've never tried it, - I suspect if you format card in your > computer to any other file system, say NTFS, - and pop it into the > camera, and try to shoot, - it won't reformat the card by itself. > > Igor >
Note I recently saw an issue where a K20D would not write to a new card. Formatting resolved the issue. Note that formatting a flash card only writes a new FAT table to the card. It's almost identical to 'delete all' but quicker. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
