Fat or fat 32 when formatting CF card?

[Transportithere]

Fat or fat 32 when formatting CF card?

[madferrit]

I can't remember, but don't you just format it in the camera?

[Transportithere]

I want to do it on the computer.
I guess I could re-format with the camera.
My CF card had a bunch of junk in the trunk. The camera format would not get rid of it.
I mentioned it on a thread and was directed to another thread that said to format.
The computer gave me a number of format options..I did a fat format.
So I did, I will need to try the camera again.. I will keep you posted.

[Transportithere]

fat works fat 32 will work also. its a matter of manageing disk/card space. do you want blocks of 64 or blocks of 32. You 'can' depending on the size of you photo, get twice as many photos on a disk/card with fat 32.

The reason I ask was because in the canonmsc file had a group of files that the camera would not delete, taking up memory...
by formating on the computer I cleared the memory completely.

[kevin harding]

The camera is just going to recreate the 'canonmsc' folder once you plug the card in and take photos... It's safer to format the cards in the camera so that you avoid any chance of corruption.

Also, some higher capacity cards should only be formatted in FAT32, I believe.

[Jon]

I believe the 300D will support FAT32; if it doesn't, just reformat in-camera and it'll make it FAT16. But the folders will be re-created regardless of how and where you format it when the camera sees that blank card.

[Nidz]

FAT 32 is what most things up to windows 98 will use.. FAT16 is oldschool.. Used for small capacity drives back in the old DOS days.

[dpastern]

Fat 8 is old days, fat 16 was used up to and including Windows 95 (windows 95B supported fat32, as did NT4). Fat 32 allows for smaller cluster sizes of data on the disk, and that's desirable. Fat 16 (from memory), has a cluster size of 4k, so if the file is say, 6k, it'll use 2 clusters, wasting 2k effectively. Fat 32 has (from memory), 16k clusters, making it that much more efficient. NTFS (NT file system) is even better, and adds ACL (Access Control Listing) controls to data as well. This is all old school, cos Unix systems like UFS and NFS have been allowing this for many years. Linux supports more file systems than you can poke a stick at as well these days.

In a nutshell, go with fat32. Format the card in the camera.

Dave

PS From memory, there are differences in the compression algorithms that fat16/32 use as well, and that does affect the overall size of data that's being stored on a disk.

[Jon]

FAT16 vs FAT32 won't appreciably affect card capacity since the files are so (relatively) large. FAT32, however, lets you go beyond 2 GB in card sizes, if the camera supports it.

[nat869]

Format in the camera, less likely to have problems that way.

[CyberDyneSystems]

FAT 16 is limited to 2GB partitions... ie it won't support a card larger than 2GB.
FAT16 cluster size @ 2GB partition is 32KB with 65,526 clusters (FAT16's max).

300D will support FAT32 and will use FAT32 for cards larger than 2GB.
FAT32 has a max FAT table of 524,208 clusters whose size can vary from 4KB to 32KB. Thus FAT32 can use a 4KB cluster size up to an 8GB partition.. after that cluster sizes go up to 8KB, 16KB and so on.

Why format a 4GB card on PC?

With Microdrives,. they perform MUCH quicker using a larger cluster size (and thus smaller FAT)
So format with FAT32 and a 32KB cluster size in Windows...

I doubt this cluster size issue plays much of a factor with solid state CF cards of 4GB or larger.

[sumunz]

I just purchased camera and new to it all.. How do you format a memory card?

[G M Fude]

There'll be a menu item under Settings, sumunz, titled 'Format card' or something like that. Be aware that formatting the card erases every single photo or video on it... everything.

If you tell us which model you have, we can give more detailed instructions (assuming you've lost the Owners Manual that came with your new camera, because that'll have full details on formatting too).