Formatting your memory cards

Almost all digital cameras use memory cards, and when you buy a new memory card you’re often urged by your camera manufacturer to format the card in the camera. For many photographers, that’s where they feel their work with the card is done, and they never format it again. The problem with this is that you could eventually run into a problem with the memory card.

Cards, like computer hard drives or discs, can become corrupted over time if you don’t take good care of them. On a computer, the process of moving around files and deleting stuff will eventually fragment the hard drive data. Little bits of junk build up, bad sectors occur, chains get lost, and to remedy all this – you defragment or format the drive. Defragmenting it will put all your data back in line by shuffling it around. Formatting will wipe it clean (and in doing so, sets everything back to zero).

Camera memory cards work the same way, except defragmenting a flash memory card is a little more tedious and unnecessary. It’s better to just format it. If you want to try and defragment a memory card, however, you can do so with a Windows computer and their built in Disk Defragmenter tool.

Formatting the card will erase all data fragments, folders, and files on the card, so make sure you have all the pictures off it first. Formatting doesn’t need to be done regularly, but if you leave it too long, you could find yourself with lost images one day, so don’t leave it too long! Formatting is best done in the camera, but you can also use the Format option on your computer if you know what type of file system your camera uses.

Since formatting takes only a few second (not like laborious process of formatting a hard drive) I usually recommend people do it every time they transfer pictures to the computer. It’s a good habit to get into, and will prevent tears in the future.