# Memory Cards, formatting and storage



## unfocused (Aug 23, 2014)

A possibly stupid question, but that's never stopped me: Do people wait until a card is almost full before reformatting it? 

I have the habit of reformatting my cards in camera after most shoots (once the files are safely transferred) with a 32GB card this often means reformatting a card that only has a fourth or less of its space used. 

My question, does frequent formatting carry any risks or reduce the life of a card? I don't like to sift through 500 images that I've already downloaded to my computer in order to transfer another 200 shots. I'd rather transfer after I've been shooting and then clear the card for the next time.


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## Don Haines (Aug 23, 2014)

The short answer about reducing the life of a card is yes.

Flash memory cards typically have an endurance of 30,000 write/erase cycles.... so each time you do a low level format you are one tick closer to failure....

That said, 30,000 cycles would allow you to fill up the card and format it every day for 82 years... so in practical terms it really does not matter.


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## unfocused (Aug 23, 2014)

Thanks. Looks like I'm covered until I'm 143.


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## Orangutan (Aug 23, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> That said, 30,000 cycles would allow you to fill up the card and format it every day for 82 years... so in practical terms it really does not matter.


The typical format operation on a camera will be a simple re-write of the filesystem structure, and will not write over the entire card. A good-quality card should do some form of wear-leveling, so formatting is not even a blip on the lifespan of a card. In theory, you should not need to format at all between uses since every device used to access the card should adhere to the same standards for the file storage structure. In reality this is mostly true, but I've seen stray reports of lost files when moving cards around.

In short, on good-quality cards formatting in-camera does no harm, and may give some small protection against file lost due to corruption of the filesystem.


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