Formatting Memory Cards: The Debunking Unit

Photography

Everyday somebody complains, on one of the many photo-forums, about problems with their memory card be it Compact Flash Express, CF Express, or Secure Digital, SD, card. And the standard answer is: “Reformat card in the camera after every upload to your computer”.

There are so many misconceptions, so at great personal expenses, I had to call the “Debunking Unit”. And let me tell you, these guys don’t come cheap.

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Problem 1: The memory card wears out

  1. Yes, the memory card has a fixed number of read and writes, after that it will die.
  2. Memory cards are rated for a number of read/write cycles. Not reads, not writes. In the old days, the 90s, the Compact Flash and SD cards were usually rated in the tens of thousand of read/write cycles.
  3. Today memory cards are rated in the millions of read/write cycles. Sandisk rates their “pro” cards at 2 million read/write cycles.

Info

  • When a company rates their card at 2 million read/write cycles, it’s the minimum amount of read/write cycles that is guaranteed. That’s the minimum number of cycles. Usually the memory card should last for at least 30% more. That’s the engineers’ way of covering their ass.
  • Please also note that it’s a cycle of a read followed by a write. But that’s not how we use the cameras. Most of the time, we do writes on the camera, unless we review the photos and do a slide show on the LCD. Most of the