How Often Do You Format Your Cards?

[BG Photo]

Originally Posted by ken74

I buy new cards when they fill up...............

nah, I would be crazy if I did that. I reformat once the images have been moved to my harddrive and then replicated. I also reformat before each shoot.

He he. A couple years ago on a visit home I found out my Mom was doing that. We got to her house and she said she had to go buy another memory card for her camera, all the ones she had were full. I probably saved her a few hundred dollars by sitting down with her and teaching her how to download them to her computer and save them. Gotta love parents with new fangled gizmos.

Back to the topic, I download after a shoot, put card in and reformat right away.

[luis_relampago]

I shoot a very high volume of sittings per day at least five days a week and every day I backup my card to my mac and also to an external HD, then I format the card and use it again. I repeat this process every day.
I only once had an issue with a 16GB Kingstone CF card but it was my mistake rather than the card, I did not formatted the card and it had video files and images from another camera and instead of formatting the card I just deleted the files manually and that was a big mistake the card got corrupted and it was big pain in the a$$.
I have and still use older CF cards with no problems yet, tho I try to renew my CF cards at least every 2 to 3 years as a measure of precaution.
There is no good precedent about the life expectancy of a memory card, many people have older cards and they never had any issues with them, but in the other hand there is people that had issues and prefer to get new ones every year or two. I think this is more of a personal choice thing.

[PhotoDen]

I had normally been just formatting as soon as I had downloaded the files but, after reading what somebody said about formatting before shooting to make sure the card is okay, I think I'm going to start doing that too. Several years back I ran into a couple of bad Lexar CF cards, probably from the same batch. Thankfully haven't had any problems with either CF or SD in recent years.

[lucian]

I use a 128MB card in the studio. Typical session takes 6 shots. During a normal week I average about 25 sessions. I format after each session. I've been using that same card for almost two years. No problems. Studio camera is a Nikon D200.

[Bob_S]

Before a shoot. That way they have been uploaded and backed up that night before they get deleted. I do that and reset my menu each time.