Hi General advice is to only let the camera erase and format cards. Not everyone uses quite the same 'standards' when setting up cards in cameras, and one computer's version of empty may not match with another. More card problems are caused by computers writing to cards (which is what erasing is) than ever happen 'in camera'.
CF cards are much better in this respect than SM cards, which rely on having the some of the memory controller electronics in the reader. I lent my E20 to a friend to 'try out' digital and they managed to corrupt 4 128M SM cards by 'erasing' them with some bit of PC software they had used to sort out files :-( fortunately someone else with a PC and Belkin reader had the reformatting software to revive the cards :-) Interrupting power or pulling out the card during read/write operations is also likely to corrupt memory. Cards are not affected by magnetic fields or X-rays, well certainly not at levels likely to be encountered in day to day life. They are drop sensitive like most electronic items, but once again more likely to a 6 foot drop onto concrete rather than a gentle tap. They are also sensitive to ESD (static electricity), so changing a card just as you get out of a car on a warm dry might not be a good idea. Incidentally flash memory has a limited number of writes to it. The internal memory management circuitry is designed to spread out the locations on the chip(s) that data is written to, so as to maximise usable life. Otherwise the file directory and start of the storage area would 'wear out' first (how often do you completely fill a card?) In normal usage this is not worth worrying about, since you will probably wear out several cameras first. There is probably no good reason to erase and then format twice unless you are specifically trying to see if you can wear out the cards :-) :-) More info at: <http://www.compactflash.org/faqs/faq.htm> Where you can find that the CF2.0 standard supports up to 137GB at a maximum of 16MB/sec - that's over two hours to download your days shoot ;-) bye for now Keith Cooper Northlight Images http://northlight-images.co.uk Photography - Digital Imaging - Apple Mac Consultancy Tel +44 (0)116 291 9092 Mobile +44 (0)780 162 9397 =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
