Quick Tip: Format Your Memory Card
By Brian Auer • June 27th, 2007
I decided a few months ago that I would always format my memory card after unloading my images from the camera. I happy to say that I’ve actually stuck with it. I’ve never had a problem with my memory cards, but I gained the understanding that it’s not a bad idea to format the card after each photo shoot. It takes a few seconds of your time, and it helps to ensure that you’ll be less likely to have issues with your memory card in the field. Like I said, I’ve stuck with this habit since I wrote the article titled “Clearing Out Your Memory Card“. If you’re not convinced, give it a read. Don’t argue, just do it.
Brian Auer is a photography enthusiast from San Diego, California. He's also the guy behind the Epic Edits Weblog. As a hobbyist photographer since 2003, his passion has been to constantly improve his photography skill set, to share his own knowledge with others, and to become an integral part of the photographic community.
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No, not “Don’t argue, just do it.” What you should have said is “Because I said so!” like all good teachers and parents the world over.
And I will, I will!
I just started doing this a couple weeks ago after reading a post that mentioned it.
It hardly takes any time at all! I don’t understand why cameras don’t auto-format the card when they erase it.
Hmmmm. What issues??. You cant just say “do this, it stops problems”, without listing the problems, does it make the cards faster?, does it give you more space?, does it improve reliablity?. Does it make your photos look better?, Or does it as I suspect, have absolutly no effect what so ever….
Hey! here is a tip, keep your memory cards in your freezer, it eliminates more problems than formating them, i know……..
For the most part, formatting doesn’t have any immediate effects on the performance of the card. It’s more like preventative maintenance to help ensure that something terrible doesn’t happen down the road. If you go to the article I link to in this tip, you’ll find three external articles that give more details on what types of issues may arise from being sloppy with your memory cards. I didn’t get into the details here because it’s a “Quick Tip”.
i can not get my card to format. it just continues to tell me to format. i cannot get to set up menu.
I don’t know, that sounds kind of weird. What kind of camera?
I’m always afraid to lose my data from the memory card, so i do formating only ofter I’m ten times sure that all iamges are in my computer.
I seldom format the cards. I am afraid that I may not have backup the images safely.
Yes even i rarely format my cards, as some times the images also get formatted during the format even though I take a backup on my computer.
can anyone help me!! i took alot of pictures from my birthday party and now that i want to download them from the 1 GB memory card it wants me to format the card, which will cause me to loose all the pictures i took. i really dont want to format the card and i havent yet, but i really dont know what to do. also when i put the memory card into the card reader it says the same thing
please help me!!
I have a kodak camera with a sandisc card when i formant my card to fat and take it out it goes bak to RAW settings what can I do,
Thanks
Rick, the idea is to reformat your card in your camera so that it contains the correct data structure for storing photos. FAT and RAW are two completely different things. RAW has to do with the file format of the photo and FAT is a file system used by computers. What is it you’re trying to do?