On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 2:05 PM, Mark Roberts <[email protected]> wrote: > steve harley wrote: > >>on 2013-12-18 7:08 Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote >>> I would be most curious to find out what exactly this formatter >>> does. >> >>yeah, there is far too much voodoo and FUD on subjects such as these; i've >>done >>generic FAT format (on OS X) as well as in camera and the only surprise i've >>had is that sometimes a volume name set on the computer doesn't stick >> >>the only hint in the note on the website is that their special formatter >>maintains the "protected area" for the security features that no one uses (in >>fact the website almost never mentions the "Secure Digital" name) > > Agreed. I occasionally format cards on my computer. Never had an > issue. Hever heard of anyone else having an issue either. > > FUD is the word.
Here's a very recent failure anecdote that may add or subtract FUD -- your choice. A month ago I bought a brand new Sandisk Extreme 32Gig card along with my new K-3 at my local pusher. I popped it into the K-3 but did not format it. I took some shots, mounted and imported in Lr, all okay. Repeated that twice more (once outdoors, long walk), again all okay. Couple of days later went out on a location scouting exercise, took dozens of shots. Tried to mount card at home: iMac can't see it. WTF? Replaced it into camera, all images intact. Tried again in iMac, no recognize; kicks it out. Damn! Went to store and bought a USB cable (K-3 doesn't come with one: bad Ricoh!) Using USB cable tried to mount card in camera on iMac -- fails in same way; sees it as bogus formatting or something and won't even let me repair it with disk utility. Finally, I formatted the card and lost all the scouting trip images. Now feeling very insecure about this, I enabled the dual-card support in the K-3, added another card from K20D and re-did the location scouting trip. No problems this time (with either card) and I haven't had any further problems with any of the cards. I later bought a second Sandisk Extreme 32G and have it the K-3 as insurance in dual card mode (writes on both). Once bitten twice shy. I put it down to failing to format the card after purchase, in either my iMac or the camera. But one lesson is: just because the card "failed" doesn't make it a bad card. It could be bad formatting. -- -bmw -- 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.
