Originally posted by Ben_Edict I think, the poll should differentiate between high quality cards (like Sandisk Ultras and Extremes) on the one hand and cheap discount brands on the other:
I hade "0%" failure on Sandisk Ultras and Extremes, but "50%" failure on cheap discount cards. That is a couple of years agao and I gave up completely on cheap cards.
Ben
I'm one that has had no failures, but my cards are two 4 Gb SanDisk Extreme III and two 8 Gb Lexar Ultra cards, not counting the 2 Gb Kingston in the photo display electronic picture frame thingy. They all rate pretty well (not the Kingston, but it came with the camera), and I am leery of the "great price for this" syndrome. I've been bitten too often.
I always format in camera after I am absolutely sure that I have the images copied successfully onto two hard drives. I never, ever, delete an image from the card. I only format them. By formatting, and never deleting, you remove all chance of an image file being in two or more pieces on the card (fragmented). There are a number of extremely good reasons why defragmentation software exists. It is to put the files contiguous for much more secure reading. If you do not delete an image, all your images will be contiguous, or as close as the system can get, anyway.