How often should you format micro SD card

[Dale D]

As the title says......how often should you format the sd card? After every flight and upload to PC? When it gets full??? Thanks!

As a routine part of stowing my drone, format card on the iPad DJI Go 4 app.

 

[Bill Kennedy]

Don’t you just love anecdotal evidence? lol
So many “I’ve been doing it this way for years” or “I prefer”. Most questions do have a correct answer, or at least mostly correct answer.
I quickly researched Sandisk and didn’t find guidance. Nothing specific from the likes of PC Magazine either. Seems to be a lot of opinions from photographers.
Time marches on and best practices get upgraded.
Personally I’d like to know what works best for reliability, then speed, then convenience.
At the end of the day we’re preserving hours of work at least and precious moments at best, so I’d like to keep them, but that’s me. I keep two backups of all my important files.

I'm with you on that

 

[Cobra193]

I‘ve been reading a lot of people saying it does no harm to reformat an SD card and only one person responded accurately that it DOES harm your card. Being solid state means that there is a finite number of readable/writes.

When using the app (or a full reformat on computer), you‘re reading and writing every bit on the card. By reformatting your card every use, you’re essentially killing it slowly in the name of card ‘health’. yes the read/write cycles are very high, but if you do a lot of shooting and reformatting, that can add up very quickly and kill your card. Plus the act of reformatting in it of itself is risking bricking your card. Plus as the card gets used more and more, it becomes less and less reliable, so I‘m not sure why you would want to add that risk in an effort to mitigate different risks.

 

[Dougcjohn]

I‘ve been reading a lot of people saying it does no harm to reformat an SD card and only one person responded accurately that it DOES harm your card. Being solid state means that there is a finite number of readable/writes.

When using the app (or a full reformat on computer), you‘re reading and writing every bit on the card. By reformatting your card every use, you’re essentially killing it slowly in the name of card ‘health’. yes the read/write cycles are very high, but if you do a lot of shooting and reformatting, that can add up very quickly and kill your card. Plus the act of reformatting in it of itself is risking bricking your card. Plus as the card gets used more and more, it becomes less and less reliable, so I‘m not sure why you would want to add that risk in an effort to mitigate different risks.

Curious, could you provide a URL to the specs, specifically the referenced finite number, and the incidence of failure. The failure of a electronic chip rewriting or fatigue would be apparent in both high level format and common usage of the card recording images & removing. Removing images and recording new is performing the same as high level reformat other than clearing the indexes.

The suggestion to low level format isn't being suggested when performing on drone or a quick format on external system. I'd agree a low level format unnecessarily touches the electronics beyond daily needs.

 

[MA2 317]

My two cents worth....

IF I format the card, it's in the PC.

I place an owners information text file on the card before placing it back in the aircraft. If I format the card in the drone, it will be deleted.

I've been using SanDisk Extreme Plus cards for years in my drones and cameras with zero problems.

 

[Dougcjohn]

I don't view any storage media as a permanent media... all has life span, indicated normally by MTBF ratings... and extremely high. The position of high level format that doesn't rewrite the images and clears the indexes vs removing the files and rewritten with new images isn't impacting the card's chips much differently, but does assist in management in my perspective, I personally don't want old images on card to be included when I perform a transfer. If deleting the images prior to new session, the chips are being manipulated as well.

 

[Bill Kennedy]

Bear with me on this cos I'm totally non-tech-savvy, BUT preCovid I drove around 120000 miles a year delivering new and used vehicles throughout UK. As an insurance prerequisite I always used a dashcam loaded with a 64mb card. The machine was in us for around 4 years without changing or reformatting. Is there a difference between my M2Z camera and the dashcam which would necessitate different treatment bearing in mind the relative amounts of 'working ' time?

 

[Dougcjohn]

Bear with me on this cos I'm totally non-tech-savvy, BUT preCovid I drove around 120000 miles a year delivering new and used vehicles throughout UK. As an insurance prerequisite I always used a dashcam loaded with a 64mb card. The machine was in us for around 4 years without changing or reformatting. Is there a difference between my M2Z camera and the dashcam which would necessitate different treatment bearing in mind the relative amounts of 'working ' time?

The use of the card is essentially the same in recording images. Although a dashcam will rewrite the oldest files with new (default) and the M2 will present a Unable to write - card full.

 

[Dougcjohn]

Bear with me on this cos I'm totally non-tech-savvy, BUT preCovid I drove around 120000 miles a year delivering new and used vehicles throughout UK.

Dang, that's a lot of seat time! My A## would be flat!

 

[Bill Kennedy]

The use of the card is essentially the same in recording images. Although a dashcam will rewrite the oldest files with new (default) and the M2 will present a Unable to write - card

Dang, that's a lot of seat time! My A## would be flat!

Definitely numb lol

 

[Tomk_]

Fascinating stuff - but what's the answer to the original question?

OK. A definitive answer.
The card must be formatted before being put into service the first time. After that, if you have corrupted files that could be attributed to memory, reformatting your card should "clean" it up. Other than that...there is no "should". Format it or not as the mood strikes you.

THE END

 

[Maviac]

Hmmm... My M2P has a 64 GB card. It’s got about 2,000 images in the Media 100 and 101 folders. And barely 2 GB used out of 64. A couple years ago I emptied it; maybe I’ll do that again in a couple more.

I’ve gotta ask - how is this possible? 2000 images should be closer to 20 GB. And that’s assuming none are raw images or video.

 

[Captain McFly]

Along this same line, I notice I have to rename photo files or risk overwriting something I would prefer not to lose, due to the photos all starting at the DJI0001 upon each new flight, and on up. How do others handle this? Do you rename all your photos that you want to save and then overwrite those you don't? I'm a bit of a newby with the computer as well as the drone. Any recommendations for photo/video editing programs?

 

[Droning on and on...]

Fascinating stuff - but what's the answer to the original question?

Once.

 

[Meta4]

I‘ve been reading a lot of people saying it does no harm to reformat an SD card and only one person responded accurately that it DOES harm your card. Being solid state means that there is a finite number of readable/writes.

But with all modern memory cards being able to withstand at least 100,000 Program/Erase Cycles, and some cards as many as 10 times more cycles than standard cards, you could format your card every day for decades without causing a problem.

When using the app (or a full reformat on computer), you‘re reading and writing every bit on the card. By reformatting your card every use, you’re essentially killing it slowly in the name of card ‘health’.

Who does a full format anyway?
A quick format as done in a camera or what most people do in a computer, deletes the file allocation table and creates a fresh blank one.
The data on disk stays there as long as it's not overwritten.
What this means is formatting the card uses up very few of the very large number of finite PE cycles and concerns about formatting reducing the lifespan of a card are greatly exaggerated.

 

[Thomas B]

Fascinating stuff - but what's the answer to the original question?

Several different but all correct methods listed... use the one you like.

 

[Robyhe]

I have a certain way of doing mine, it works for me so I'll continue to do it my way.
There are an abundant ways to complete this task and once you've done it without complications I'm certain this will continue.

 

[Drone4]

As the title says......how often should you format the sd card? After every flight and upload to PC? When it gets full??? Thanks!

I typically do a quick format after every shoot. Erases the folders and data and causes no confusion.

 

[danny_2020]

I think you're right.

I think you are right about being right about Tomk_ being right

 

[E.T. DRONE HOME]

I just drag and drop the files to my iMac desktop file and then transfer the files on the card to the trash and empty same. That erases the pics/vids on the card. Then I put the card back in my M2P. I have never reformatted any of my cards in the last 2 years.

I used to follow the same steps…but on the DRONE FILM GUIDE channel I learned it was equally okay to just format it each time.