Does formatting CF cards frequently decrease lifespan?

I was wondering if formatting should be done as little as possible and allow the card to simply fill up before formatting. Or is failure rate independent of formatting frequency?

Any other insight?

Good question, although i would say that if you are doing formatting in camera, it is a quick format of sorts that involves a simple rewrite of the mbr (or whatever) which is contained on a very small part of the disk (think about how when you format an 8GB disk, you don't get the full 8Gb....its because mbr/etc information is also stored on a small part of the drive)

Therefore only a small part is being changed and thus shouldn't have a huge impact on the drive

Now if you are doing a low-level format, that requires lots of writes and thus will impact the lifespan of your drive

I have my camera format my card after ever shoot, also helps keep any fragmentation (rarely a worry on flash memory anyway) down

I am pretty sure that you will outgrow a card long before you wear it out.

rklepper wrote in post #11620449
I am pretty sure that you will outgrow a card long before you wear it out.

Thats what I was thinking.

And, FWIW I only format my cards in my camera, and I do it after every download to my computer.

Just check your memory card "Minimum insertion/removal cycles".

Sample link: http://alltrands.com …8830-smartphone.htm/56671

"Minimum 10000 insertion/removal cycles"...

Back to the original question,, no..

Yes , but you will never reach that point . Think of a demo camera in a store - how many shots has it taken ? Ever see a salesman say this is how easy it is to erase and just reformats the card ?
There is a better chance of corrupting a card by just deleting and not formating it .
Pictures just get to big for cards .
I have 4 mb cards that will never be used again because of size .
I delete the pictures after backing up to 2 drives and always format the card in camera

CitizenMinistry wrote in post #11620190
I was wondering if formatting should be done as little as possible and allow the card to simply fill up before formatting. Or is failure rate independent of formatting frequency?

Any other insight?

No, format a million times, no damage what so ever, a complete myth that it does.

Even with removal and re-inserting the CF card 10000 times, you would have to do that every 10 photographs in order to match the shutter life MTBF (100000 actuations) ! CF memory supposedly handles 100000 write cycles (same bit written to 100000 times), IIRC.

There is a better chance of you getting dirt in pin scokets or bending pins .

We have 4 1GB SanDisk Extreme III's that we've used for 6 years. Nearly half a million images shot & downloaded between the 4 cards. Each time a card was downloaded, it was formatted in camera. A conservative estimate would be 500 formats each (more likely 600+).

We had one failure early on (two years old?) where we couldn't get a consistent read from the card, it was replaced under warranty, no issues since.

The cards still see light use & always get formatted in camera.

Recommended.

rklepper wrote in post #11620449
I am pretty sure that you will outgrow a card long before you wear it out.

Thats probably true... Unless you get one of those 128 GB card

thanks for the replies!

NO... format all you want.

Wilt wrote in post #11621453
Even with removal and re-inserting the CF card 10000 times, you would have to do that every 10 photographs in order to match the shutter life MTBF (100000 actuations) ! CF memory supposedly handles 100000 write cycles (same bit written to 100000 times), IIRC.

MTBF is NOT a measure of it's actual lifespan. It is the statistical "Mean Time Between Failures". Again, just statistics, not a true measure of actual lifespan.

And I'm sure most NAND these days don't even come close to write cycles of 100k!