THANKZ!!

Plus, if you Delete All, you’ll still end up with folders and hidden thumbnail files and that lot, which can fragment the MFT even more.

I’ve lost a cardful of images that way.

I make use of the USB cable to transfer pictures to my computer. This reduces wear and tear on my camera’s battery cover as well as on the contacts of my memory card and the contacts of the card reader in my camera, not to mention handling and stressing of the card. In that sense it should certainly prolong the life of the card. Of course you may get some additional wear and tear on your USB contacts, so you can try to be gentle with them and avoid transferring pictures too often, like transferring them one at a time as you take them, etc.

I didn’t quite get the point in the article about the need to format the card frequently as opposed to simply deleting files. Isn’t this memory card similar to the flash memory/pen drive that we use to transfer data between computers? I don’t format that thing all the time either; I simply delete files, and it works just fine. (I format that only when I suspect the possibility of a virus).

I would have thought that deleting is much gentler on the card: all it does is make the data eligible for overwriting, right? It doesn’t really erase the data. (And that’s why it’s possible to recover deleted files.)

You should of course format a new card before use. But otherwise, wouldn’t it be better to format the card only when required, like whenever the card seems to be slowing down?

Is it better to use cables to transfer or load pics to a hard drive versus using a card reader? Would the cable help prolong the SD cards life?

Thanks for this article. Good to be aware of how others do things.