Is frequent formating of camera memory card safe? They say it is good habbit to format instead of erasing images to prevent the card becoming corrupt. But can frequent formatting also damage or corrupt the card?
by 
Jimmyz101
ANSWERS: 1
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This is not an issue that should affect amateur, or even professional, photographers. Flash memory can only go through a limited number of write/delete cycles before it 'wears out', so to speak. However, modern flash memory can tolerate tens of thousands of write/delete cycles to the same memory locations without problems. This issue, where it does occur, is handled by load balancing, so that the same memory locations are not written over repeatedly. This can be done on a camera by letting the card fill up before you delete any files or reformat it. You should, of course back up any files as soon as you can, because digital images are one delete key away from oblivion. However, you don't need to remove these files from the flash disk or reformat it, unless it has been corrupted. As you add more files to the disk, you will be writing into memory locations that you would not use if, for example, you erased the card after each use. A paper on this subject can be found on the Sandisk website: http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/File/OEM/WhitePapersAndBrochures/RS-MMC/WPaperWearLevelv1.0.pdf
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