NikonGear'23
Gear Talk => Other => Topic started by: Matthew Currie on June 25, 2017, 02:46:46
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I recently came across the web site of the SD Card Association, and it includes a formatting program. I had a nice 32 gigabyte Sandisk Extreme that packed up completely a couple of years ago, refusing even to be reformatted by camera or computer, but when I ran this program it came back to life. Supposedly it might also speed up older cards that have bogged down after many uses. Might be worth a try if you have a card or cards that no longer work well.
I've been putting the rejuvenated card through its paces for a couple of days, and so far so good.
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
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I read about this SD Association utility a few years back. I format my SD cards with this utility and then format them again in my cameras. The SD utility has various features and formats to SD Association standards. I believe the camera only erases the file list and adds a few items the camera wants to see. I only use the SD utility ocationally or if I think the card has been corrupted.
Maybe another way of saying this is the SD utility does a "real format" while the camera does a "quick format." I use the SD Association utility in preference to Windows' and MAC's built-in utilities.
Dave
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I only use the format feature provided by the camera body. I don't really see the advantage of proceeding differently; this gives you also a chance to recover images from an erroneously formatted memory card.
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I have generally only used the camera's format feature as well, but the SD utility seems able to get a little deeper into a card that has gone wrong. I wouldn't bother if the card is not causing problems, but it seems like a good resource to have around. Of course with cards so relatively cheap these days, I don't think I'd put important images on any card that caused problems, but so far this one seems useable.
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Matthew, sorry, I completely overlooked the point that the card was already in trouble 😏