PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - SD memory cards for cameras. Formatting.
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Old 31st October 2005 | 20:07
  #24 (permalink)  
Feline
 
Joined: Sep 1999
Posts: 175
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From: Deepest Dark Afrika
Format in the camera!

Probably better to format card in camera. Reason being that you may find that camera adds a directory structure to the card once it has formatted the card. On my ancient Olympus, it creates a directory structure \DCIM\Olymp100 and the pictures are stored in the \Olymp100 directory. If you use a card that has not been formatted in the camera and doesn't have this directory structure, it will store the pictures, but it is totally impossible to access them. The "DCIM' sub-directory forms part of an industry standard for video (camera) and music devices - but I cannot remember where I saw the complete description.
Formatting a storage device such as a card (or for that matter, a disk) simply "prepares it to store data". A "Quick" format simply erases everything off it - a "Complete" or "Full" format also checks the integrity of the media (and will mark any bad sectors or clusters so that they cannot be used to store data).
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