Portable hard drives?

[IncompletePete]

I'm planning to get digital witihn the year and was wondering about hard drives. Once you've transfered the images, do any hard drives automatically format the card or would I have to sit down and pop it back into the camera and wait whilst the camera formats the card?

[Scottes]

The camera formats the card. (And always use the camera to format the card.) Formatting is very quick - about a 2-second operation counting all the button pushing.

[petiot]

Hi. I have a Gmini A220 (archos) and no, it does not format the card after you download the photo to the disk (the opposite would appear to be strange to me).

(PS dont buy the Gmini for photo wallet purpose)

Dan

[IncompletePete]

The camera formats the card. (And always use the camera to format the card.) Formatting is very quick - about a 2-second operation counting all the button pushing.

Even on a full 1Gb card?

[Morden]

The camera formats the card. (And always use the camera to format the card.) Formatting is very quick - about a 2-second operation counting all the button pushing.

Even on a full 1Gb card?

Yes, though it takes a few seconds later on Microdrives. Time taken to format is irrespective of how full or empty the card or drive is.

[Scottes]

The camera formats the card. (And always use the camera to format the card.) Formatting is very quick - about a 2-second operation counting all the button pushing.

Even on a full 1Gb card?

Yep. The "formatting" is really just a format of the directory info table. It basically just re-writes the area of the card where the file info is kept, simply erasing the file names.

[CyberDyneSystems]

It is the same as a "quick format" on a PC.... on flash memory.. it takes seconds.

[Cadwell]

Not always true. With a 10D and a 4GB microdrive the format is a "full" format, including changing the allocation unit size if it differs from it's default one. Consequently it takes some time.... How do I know this? Because the 4GB microdrive works much quicker in a 10D if you format it on the PC with a 32K allocation unit. If you ever format it on a 10D it goes back to it's default and runs like a dog again...

Perhaps the 10D handles FAT16 and FAT32 differently.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Actually Cadwell.. in my expeirience... if you format an MD with 32K clusters on a PC then reformat in a 10D it only does a quick format.. (it takes well under a minute) and it retains the 32K cluster.. A full format of a 4 gig drive would take about 15 minutes or more...

[Cadwell]

Actually Cadwell.. in my expeirience... if you format an MD with 32K clusters on a PC then reformat in a 10D it only does a quick format.. (it takes well under a minute) and it retains the 32K cluster.. A full format of a 4 gig drive would take about 15 minutes or more...

Yup... full format, 15 minutes or more. Every time in my 10D. Stick in back in the PC, do a chkdsk and lo and behold - back to the small cluster size. Pain in the @r5e when I do it by mistake.

[jonnyhorizon]

i have read that it is best to erase the card in the camera - which is what i ususally do
however, sometimes , when i do not want to get the camera out, i erase the folders on the card while it is mounted in the computers usb reader -
seems to work ok...j

[xrunner123]

Once you've transfered the images, do any hard drives automatically format the card or would I have to sit down and pop it back into the camera and wait whilst the camera formats the card?

Neither. If you already can transfer images, then the hard drive was already formatted so I believe that there is no need to ever do it again.

[robertwgross]

Neither. If you already can transfer images, then the hard drive was already formatted so I believe that there is no need to ever do it again.

I think you misunderstood the discussion.

The original poster had transferred images from CF card to portable storage drive. Then his question was whether the CF card should be reformatted there in the portable storage drive or in the camera. (In the camera is correct.)

He was not trying to format the portable storage drive.

By the way, if you needed to do that, you would have the portable storage drive attached to the computer via USB cable, and then the format operation can be controlled by the keyboard and mouse.

---Bob Gross---