Beware Those Little Sections of Space

Following is a faithful recreation of some advice offered by a self-described professional photographer:

Do not delete files from your digital camera as you go. Download all of your images onto your computer and delete from there. When you delete files from the camera individually, you get rid of the pictures you don't like and you make more space on your card. But in doing this, you also "make space fragmented on the card." There are "little sections of space" remaining where you deleted a photo, and the card tries to fill in those spaces. This can cause card corruption.

So, is that sound advice, or is it just another of the 82,433,516 irksome, niggling, persnickety warnings of disaster that, if heeded, will turn photographic fun into a fathomless morass of anxiety and dread?


—Tedder

It's probably sound advice, but may be just a little alarmist. I have, on occasion, deleted files in-camera during a shoot and haven't suffered any consequences because of it.

If you do it continuously and don't format the card periodically you may be headed for trouble. The accepted process is to format the card after each download, making sure the images transferred to your computer successfully before formatting the card.

This is sound advice from a performance point of view but has little impact on data corruption.


Edited to add: I'd be more worried about deleting the wrong image or missing a good shot while chimping.

With the low price of CF cards, this is something that concerns me not at all...delete from the computer.

that is sound advice. I usually transfer files to pc then delete them.

I do it all the time, have done it for years, no card failures.

i do it all the time too

Once I've downloaded all my pictures (with a card reader), I format the card in the camera. (imagined) problem solved!

Tedder wrote in post #10333072
So, is that sound advice, or is it just another of the 82,433,516 irksome, niggling, persnickety warnings of disaster that, if heeded, will turn photographic fun into a fathomless morass of anxiety and dread?


—Tedder

no,no, not the fathomless morass of anxiety and dread!
I rarely fill a card, so I rarelydelete in the field. if there is any chance of filling a card, I bring 4 or 5 with me, then I run out of batteries-DOH! I have done it on ocasion-never a problem, but I probably did make fragmented memory space that formatted out just fine, whew!

Fearmongering...

All of the above.
Just format the card every time you put it back in.

philwillmedia wrote in post #10333763
All of the above.
Just format the card every time you put it back in.

That's what I do, and it is definitely a good idea!

I prefer to delete pics as I go along instead of dumping EVERY shot I took on my computer and going from there. I've shot professionally (news, real estate, weddings, etc) as well as for fun for years and years...I've NEVER had a card corrupt on me.

It does exactly the same when you delete them on a PC, though granted you've got all your photos by then.

DazJW wrote in post #10336163
It does exactly the same when you delete them on a PC, though granted you've got all your photos by then.

More to the point, it does exactly the same thing when you delete files on your computer hard drive or pretty much any other mass storage device.