Memory Card - keep or erase?

[kiwi]

I have a fella who comes into my shop and uses CF cards as his only backup source. You may think he's crazy, but he's a man who used to shoot reams upon reams of slide film, and went through the very expensive process of having our lab develop and mount them, each and every week. Putting it in financial terms, he says he spends much less on purchasing Sandisk Extreme CF cards each week than he would otherwise. He recently shot a play all the way through dress rehearsal to final night performance and shot around 20,000 images. Not something I would do, but I have also heard that CF cards are the most stable, sturdy medium to storm images on longer-term

I do think he's crazy to be honest, I cant think of any financial justification for storing images on CF cards

Just a simple $/mb equation on any level makes no sense, even if like me you have three storage areas

What if he has a fire and his CF cards are destroyed etc ?

[fastr1red]

G'day La L


By Formatting a card/storage device, you are "re-magnetising" the whole device and cleaning out the bits of rubbish that may or may-not [after a while of use] still be a complete image

Just a quick 1 for you there Phil, Formatting a card on most devices does NOT remagnetise the card. Please be aware of this. It does rewrite the FAT with a new index thereby removing tags to old files, however, and please note this, files CAN still be recovered from formatted disks or cards. There are ways to wipe them clean, and yes magnetising a card does do that (not completely), formatting won't.

The risk people take by storing on cards is thay are easily transportable, ie just pick up a couple of cards and sit on top of a stereo speaker or other magnetised device for a while and see if you can recover all your pictures.

I worked in forensics for some time and tasked to do just that, recover files from formatted storage, (Including magnetic media)

[Analog6]

I still have some I bought in 2005 when I got my first DSLR and they have had many, many erasures and rewrites and so far (touch wood) not one has failed on me.

[Speedway]

My computer is set to erase images when downloading is finished. I then delete the obvious duds then copy these to my 2nd HDD and then to a 3rd external drive, then as I work On them I do the same. when the folder gets big enough or I have finished with it I burn it to 3 DVD's which are then stored in different places. With 1tb HDD's at under $100 and blank DVD's less than.05 cents each, storing on memory cards is totally uneconomical.
Keith.

[Speedway]

My computer is set to erase images when downloading is finished. I then delete the obvious duds then copy these to my 2nd HDD and then to a 3rd external drive, then as I work On them I do the same. when the folder gets big enough or I have finished with it I burn it to 3 DVD's which are then stored in different places. With 1tb HDD's at under $100 and blank DVD's less than.05 cents each, storing on memory cards is totally uneconomical.
Keith.

[flame70]

I'd be a bit cautious if your computer is automatically deleting your files off your card before you've even checked you've had a perfect download. Also I don't know where you can get blank DVD's less than.05 cents each but if you've a link please let me know cheers.

[calloyd]

With over 70,000 photos (over 400GB), storing on memory cards isn't an option. I format each card after downloading and saving to 2 external hard drives, one I work on daily and the other as a backup. A third, which is not backed up so often unfortunately, is stored off site with my son in Adelaide.

I can't imagine trying to keep track of what would be on each memory card if that was my method, at least on the hard drive I can organise folders, delete the duds and find anything I want reasonably quickly. I've had a hard drive fail - that's why I keep two at home and one somewhere else.

[wmphoto]

All interesting replies. The reason I originally asked the question was because I had heard (and read)of people who use a new memory card every time and keep the full one as a backup. It didn't make total sense to me other than for the reason of a card failing and after reading all the replies it would appear to be that few people would choose this option. As to the reason why , especially when you consider the $/mb as pointed out by Kiwi.

[la lumiere]

Thanks Ozzie T and Fastr1red for your replies. What happens if you don't ever format the card - Is there a disadvantage or problem? Does the card not work properly or is space just taken up with junk? I've just had a quick read of the Formatting the card section in my camera manual which says (as indicated above by others) that only the file management information is changed. The actual data is not completely erased.
My question is - What is the advantage/disadvantge of simply deleting your files over deleting and then formatting?

[ZedEx]

I can't answer that in technical terms, but I can tell you that it WILL more than likely lead to a card failure. I have seen cards come in for recovery (I do card recoveries at work) that have about 50 subfolders that are all mostly empty, as the person has usually never formatted and just deletes pics here and there. I think with formatting, any tiny errors that are on the card get marked so that they don't get read and misinterpreted.

Thanks Ozzie T and Fastr1red for your replies. What happens if you don't ever format the card - Is there a disadvantage or problem? Does the card not work properly or is space just taken up with junk? I've just had a quick read of the Formatting the card section in my camera manual which says (as indicated above by others) that only the file management information is changed. The actual data is not completely erased.
My question is - What is the advantage/disadvantge of simply deleting your files over deleting and then formatting?

[wmphoto]

Very timely.......I was in a camera store today and a woman came in complaining that her camera wouldn't read her memory card anymore. The guy asked her when she last formatted the card - "What's that?" was the reply. He asked her how many memory cards she had - "One". How long have you been using that card - "About six months". He picked up the camera, formatted the memory card and hey presto everything works again (and he sold her another memory card - just in case).

[GerryK]

I am a simple person. Cards are commodities. Use them, treat them well, and when they died get another one. I tend to delete & defrag which has worked well for me. Also have recovery software to retrieve deleted files. End game is no digital storage device will 'save a file or image' for ever, so backup regularly and at least print the 'keeper' images if not print & mount.