Formatting SD Cards

[Dave Fritz]

We've had some trail cameras that after I viewed the SD cards on my PC I would format them on the PC and use them in the trail cameras. I would simple replace the SD card and leave the camera in place. These trail cameras are starting to break so I purchased a new trail camera. This trail camera requires that I format it in the camera itself. If I format it on my PC it won't work in the camera.

This requires I either preview the photos in the field on my iPhone and reformat the camera on site or bring the camera into the house, view the images on my PC and format on the camera, take the camera back out and put it back up.

Is there a way to change how my PC formats so it's compatible with the trail camera? Thank you for your help.

[Erik Loza]

Dave, how often is it required to actually format the card? Can you just delete old/unwanted recordings? I don't have any experience with trail cams but LOTS of experience with digital photography and don't actually find the need to format cards very often.

Erik

[Jerome Stanek]

Why not just use 2 cards put one in the camera and format it then when you take that one out put the other in and format it. You would only have to go to the camera once for each viewing

[Bill Howatt]

For years, it is not uncommon to have a device recommend/insist that the formatting be done on the device.
Are you just formatting to delete the images? If so, why not trying to just delete the images. This will/should leave the file structure setup alone - that really is all formatting does is setup the file structure.
When you are formatting in the PC are you sure you are setting up the correct format - FAT, FAT32, exFAT, or whatever. Should be able to see what it is (Properties) before doing the format so you pick the right one if available but I don't hold out much hope for this.
Have a look at: https://progradedigital.com/format-memory-card-camera-computer/

[Alan Rutherford]

Format it once on the camera just to humor it but after that delete the pictures and put it back without formatting. I'll be very surprised if that doesn't work but try it once as a test before you really rely on it.

[Lee Schierer]

Why not just use 2 cards put one in the camera and format it then when you take that one out put the other in and format it. You would only have to go to the camera once for each viewing

My Stealth cam trail camera recommends that you let the camera format the card and delete any photos on the card using the camera. I use two cards and swap them out from time to time. I can copy all the files on the SG card to my laptop, leaving them on the camera SD card. When I place the used card back into the camera, I tell the camera to delete the SD card. So far ( two year) the process has worked well.

I just checked one of my trail camera cards and they use Fat32 format. Files are jpg files.

[Warren Lake]

probably taken 50,000 photos or more on three digitals over the years okay four if the first video one that also has a 1.3 meg still shot. Cards were put in a card reader or USB stick that takes the cards put in the computer, download photos to the hard drive then card deleted all and put back in the camera to start again. Its worked perfect for all cameras and cards. When I did see format come up it was at the end of life of the cards where they started to get a bit finicky from being in and out half a gazillion times.

[Mark Wedel]

The reasons the cameras are probably saying to do everything (format/delete/whatever) on the camera is that the maker of the camera is not sure how good their support of the filesystem is - it may not implement all the features of the given filesystem, so they know if all interaction is done on the camera, it will never see those extra features, but if you format it on a native windows machine, it may use those extra features which could cause corruption.

Depending on exactly how important the data is, I'd try formatting on the computer, and then just see if it works - if it does, you are good to go, if you see corruption, just format on the camera.

As far as formatting vs deleting files - if the SD card has thousands of files (which could be the cause with such cameras), formatting could be a much faster way to erase the card vs deleting that many files, so I could see why one might want to just re-format the device.

[Thomas McCurnin]

I'm with Bill on this. I have several and use SD cards for a lot of other things.

There is usually only two types of formatting NTFS or FAT, my bet being FAT32 is what the Camera likes, but you test that by putting a formatted SD card in the computer and right clicking on it and viewing its properties. So I'd experiment to see if formatting with whatever format the Camera uses, but by doing it on the PC.

[Dave Fritz]

Once again, this site has proved itself to be priceless. I've learned a ton and am continuing to learn. I'm able to download my trial cam SD card on site onto my phone and then view images and delete the ones I don't want and send the ones I do to my PC. So far so good. I'll check how it went today. Thanks again.

[Curt Harms]

Format it once on the camera just to humor it but after that delete the pictures and put it back without formatting. I'll be very surprised if that doesn't work but try it once as a test before you really rely on it.

I had one application where simply erasing the files wouldn't work, I had to do a quick format to get ride of existing file and write new. If I didn't format, the device would go through all the motions of writing the new database but when restarting the device the old database was still there.

[Warren Lake]

ive always just erased the card when its in the computer in the USB stick. There is a feature on an SD card if you lose your photos and I have past making some mistake. You can go into the SD card and still get them back even after you have deleted them.

If you format the card can you still do that?

[Thomas McCurnin]

No, once formatted, you're done.

[Mark Wedel]

I'm not sure about SD cards. Modern NVME/SSD drives have logic where the OS can tell the device if it is using certain blocks or not. In this way, the device can be smarter about certain activities - for example, if a memory cell has high use but according to the OS, it is no longer being used, it can start using some of the spare cells without having to move to data off that high use cell. In the process of formatting this device, the OS will basically tell the firmware that none of that data is being used anymore, at which point it may be very hard to get that data back (if you try to read a cell which you say is no longer in use, the device might just return empty data and not even read that memory cell).

But I'm not sure if SD cards have this logic - if not, in theory data recovery programs can get back some of the data even on a format, because most of that data is still there (mostly just the directory which has file names is erased). But that might still be a very hit or miss process depending on lots of factors.

If you delete and then use an undelete utility, those tend to work because the OS more or less just says don't show this file and free up its space, but data about it still exists. But if you write anything after deleting a file, all bets are also off, because the OS might very well store information where that file was.

[Bill Howatt]

It's not easy to apply with certainty all operations to SD cards but likely the concepts are the same. I'd say the operation depends on the system, not the logic in the device.
Speaking from the Windows PC perspective, you can undelete files because the information is not altered by a regular delete - it just adjusts the entries in what I'll call the master file table to say the space is free for use. Unless the actual location(s) get overwritten the data exists and this how an undelete program works.
Interestingly, a PC quick format works the same way, it sets up the table on the disk and leaves the actual data areas alone - this is how data recovery, similar to file delete recovery, after a format works. However, if you do the full, not quick format, then the formatting goes out and writes zeros all over the disk as part of its checking mechanism (from Vista onwards) and this destroys the data.

[Curt Harms]

No, once formatted, you're done.

It might depend on where the device was 'fully' formatted or quick formatted. There is or at least used to be software that would recover from being formatted. That is why if you really wanted a file or disk unreadable, you wanted to overwrite with zeros the areas on the hard drive containing the data you wanted gone. SSDs may change how one securely deletes files, I'm not sure.

[Bill Howatt]

You raise an interesting question about securely erasing SSDs.
Apparently the HD method of writing data over the locations does not provide a secure deletion method for SSDs because of the way they work such as with load levelling, over-provision, etc. Some motherboard's UEFI BIOSes have a Secure Erase function built into them but if yours doesn't then you have to get some software either from the drive's manufacturer or elsewhere to do it.

[Warren Lake]

thats only happened to me twice in 35 years of digital cameras or whatever it is. It was a guy at the camera store that mentioned if you ever loose your info there is some stuff you can type in to access the card and get it back, at least right after. This on an SSD card I dont think I had a program. Now I dont cut and past I copy and paste just in case though current computers are good. Past power in this town snapped off a enough times right when I was working and stuff vapourized. Been much better and no issues with that anymore.

[Mark Wedel]

You are correct in that erasing SSD is harder than hard disks (though even hard disks had some number of spare sectors that might not be erased, but the number of such spares was fairly low and also hard for a normal person to get that data). However, to help with this, newer SSDs have a secure erase feature which makes sure all of the old data will not be accessible (either through changing the encryption key used for the old data and wiping what that old key was, or just physically clearly every memory cell). I'm not sure how easy it is to access that through windows (never tried it

Of course, all of this is just to prevent random person reading that data. If you are concerned with NSA getting that data, then you basically need to go for total physical destruction of the device.

[mike stenson]

Since this has drifted to drives, you should use self encrypting drives and utilize the encryption. Recreating the DEK does create a VERY secure deletion method. Sure, someone can go read the 0s and 1s, but that's all they are at that point.

[Roger Feeley]

HA! Timely topic. I just deployed my first trail cam. We live in a small town that is blessed with a local newspaper. I’m a big supporter of small town journalism so I subscribe even though I don’t have to.It’s delivered free to every driveway every Wednesday evening or Thursday. But over the last year, I haven’t been getting the paper when the rest of my street does. Why do they skip me? We’ve emailed them periodically but no paper. So, today, I put out a trail cam. I want t9 see if they are t4uly skipping my house or if someone is pilfering my paper.

[Dave Zellers]

HA! Timely topic. I just deployed my first trail cam. We live in a small town that is blessed with a local newspaper. I’m a big supporter of small town journalism so I subscribe even though I don’t have to.It’s delivered free to every driveway every Wednesday evening or Thursday. But over the last year, I haven’t been getting the paper when the rest of my street does. Why do they skip me? We’ve emailed them periodically but no paper. So, today, I put out a trail cam. I want t9 see if they are t4uly skipping my house or if someone is pilfering my paper.

I had to look at my keyboard to decipher that. It could be a K9.