"Deep" Formatting SD Cards

[Deep6 7]

I erase files on my SD cards by formatting in the camera, but I have an article that says there is a formatting program from "The SD Association". I don't format the cards using the computer.

Have you heard of this?

How do you erase/format your SD cards?

 

 

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

 

How come I can't cut & paste to this edit?

 

What happen to the insert link option?

 

Bob

 

[diverdoug1 56]

There is no advantage that I know of to reformating with your computer insatead of the computer, but some cameras require that they reformat the card via camera prior to using. So, I always just reformat in camera.

[dougdaulton 1]

Yep. We experienced some weird problems with our SD cards when shooting with the BMPC. Using this program solved the problem. Rich felt so strongly about the fix, he posted about it on PhotoFocus.

[jander4454 15]

I've used this SD Format programme and although it made no difference to the performance in the camera ( the card is fine in my Sony NEX-5) it restored another card to allow it to be used with ReadyBoost in my laptop.

[ChrigelKarrer 52]

I downloaded and used this program as well on several speed and quality SD cards.

I found no substantial speed improvement between camera formatted cards and with this program formatted cards,

All variations in read/write speed where somewhere around 0,3 MB/sec and i guess that this was due the use of the computer. during the speed test.
It might be that this program can reactivate "bricked" cards, but as i have all my cards in working conditions i can't tell something regarding that.

Chris

[rtrski 20]

I think the primary advantage of that format program is if you ever change the formatting of an SD card to something else, e.g. NTFS or FAT-32, and want to get back to FATex. Plus it might do some dead sector checking during the operation to rule out any already decaying zones.

 

I have a microSD I use in my Surface Pro (it pretty much lives in that slot full time) that I reformatted to NTFS so I could put a virtual disk file on it and automount at startup thru Task Scheduler. It was a workaround to keep my music library on it vs. on the 128GB (really ~70GB usable after OS and recovery partitions) SSD on the Surface, yet still have it cataloged by W8. If I ever move that card back out of the Surface and want to use in a camera I'll probably run the deep format on it.

Edited April 30, 2014 by rtrski

[dougdaulton 1]

Using this tool won't add any speed or other performance boosts to the cards. It is intended to do a complete low-level format which may fix odd instabilities in a given card or recover a card that is no longer readable.

For these applications, it is great to have in the toolbox.