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06-26-2018, 04:19 PM   #16
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QuoteOriginally posted by Adam Quote
The easiest would be to copy the files from the SD card to a folder on the computer using your OS's file manager. Since you are splitting the files, you'd have to copy from both cards.

It might be easier just to store both file formats on one card, therefore.
I set my K-3 up this way when I was using the EyeFi card to send lower res to my phone. It isn't too hard to resync then back to a single directory.

06-26-2018, 05:48 PM   #17
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QuoteOriginally posted by paulh Quote
I always copy/paste the files from the SD card to the PC. Once I'm certain the files are copied, only then do I reformat the SD card. I never "delete" files from the card - this can create problems. FWIW I use a USB card reader.
Excellent points! Personally, I always lock the card before inserting it into the computer. Today's operating systems write a bunch of crap to any storage device connected to them.

And I don't reformat until I've checked all the transferred files and the computer has run a backup to reduce the chance of data loss.
06-26-2018, 07:03 PM   #18
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I've always done the "Drag & drop" method which was: Connect the camera (fully charged btw) to the computer, open the files that had the photos on them, select a photo and click CTL+A to select all of the photos, then drag them into a pre-named folder on the desktop.
06-26-2018, 10:22 PM   #19
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I have never had a problem due to deleting pictures from the SD card. Though I (almost?) always delete the pictures via the camera, not the computer.

06-26-2018, 10:54 PM   #20
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I ran into an odd happening the other day with one of the SD cards in my K3. My son transferred some pictures to our network storage (redundant RAID array, power backup, etc.) and when he was done, he deleted the pics from the card while on the computer. I noticed I had very little space left on my RAW SD card in my K3 later that day, and started checking it out. No images on the card, but room for only 62 images, according to the counter in the camera. Now, this is a 32GB card, and I am used to it holding 598-600 images, so I was curious. Pulled it from the camera and checked it in the computer, and lo and behold, there was an additional folder on the card aside from the usual DCIM folder with date-coded folders full of RAW files. This extra folder was at the same root level as the DCIM folder, and was labeled "Trash." Inside this folder were all the files deleted from the card previously. I formatted the card to get rid of everything (I'd already verified my files were on our NAS) and now things are back to normal. So now I only delete in-camera, after checking the transferred files/images on the computer. Seems to be working fine that way.
06-27-2018, 01:28 AM   #21
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Apologies to the OP, of course it should have been "copy and paste"
Thanks to all those who posted corrections.
Seems like there are bigger problems .... I've usually had error messages about corrupt file structure or similar when the PC can't find files that the camera can display.
Maybe an older PC which can't handle large memory cards? although that would usually create some kind of error.
Either way a USB cable should work.
06-27-2018, 02:19 AM   #22
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QuoteOriginally posted by dubyam Quote
I ran into an odd happening the other day with one of the SD cards in my K3. My son transferred some pictures to our network storage (redundant RAID array, power backup, etc.) and when he was done, he deleted the pics from the card while on the computer. I noticed I had very little space left on my RAW SD card in my K3 later that day, and started checking it out. No images on the card, but room for only 62 images, according to the counter in the camera. Now, this is a 32GB card, and I am used to it holding 598-600 images, so I was curious. Pulled it from the camera and checked it in the computer, and lo and behold, there was an additional folder on the card aside from the usual DCIM folder with date-coded folders full of RAW files. This extra folder was at the same root level as the DCIM folder, and was labeled "Trash." Inside this folder were all the files deleted from the card previously. I formatted the card to get rid of everything (I'd already verified my files were on our NAS) and now things are back to normal. So now I only delete in-camera, after checking the transferred files/images on the computer. Seems to be working fine that way.
Was the computer a Mac?

06-27-2018, 03:43 AM   #23
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I'm using Windows 7, and when ever I insert a card reader into a USB port, a dialog box opens and lists several options for how to handle files on the SD card. Among the options available is importing using Windows to a selected directory or a new directory. I haven't imported much more than 30 or 40 files at a time, but it works for me, be it jpg or raw.
06-27-2018, 07:39 AM   #24
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QuoteOriginally posted by LensBeginner Quote
Was the computer a Mac?
No. We run PC architecture and either Windows or Linux, depending on the particular machine. I've never seen this behavior before, so that's why it took me as so odd.
06-27-2018, 07:48 AM - 1 Like   #25
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This may be one of the reasons the standard advice is to format in camera and avoid individual photo deletion.
06-27-2018, 08:35 AM - 1 Like   #26
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QuoteOriginally posted by Mikesul Quote
This may be one of the reasons the standard advice is to format in camera and avoid individual photo deletion.
Very true. Individual photo deletion has two other problems:

1) Over time, the memory space of the card will become fragmented which will slow it's operation.

2) If the card does suffer from some kind of corruption in the file system, it will be carried over to the next photo session and may cause data loss.


Reformatting gives the card a fresh start.
06-27-2018, 11:04 AM   #27
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QuoteOriginally posted by dubyam Quote
No. We run PC architecture and either Windows or Linux, depending on the particular machine. I've never seen this behavior before, so that's why it took me as so odd.
Yup, odd....
Maybe some third-party program's strange behavior.

I'll second the ones advocating formatting every time.
06-27-2018, 02:04 PM   #28
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QuoteOriginally posted by photoptimist Quote
Very true. Individual photo deletion has two other problems:

1) Over time, the memory space of the card will become fragmented which will slow it's operation.

2) If the card does suffer from some kind of corruption in the file system, it will be carried over to the next photo session and may cause data loss.


Reformatting gives the card a fresh start.
That is not how SD works. Flash memory does not slow down due to fragmentation or storage space. There are no moving parts to contend with to cause any particular read/write to be any slower than any other. (perhaps an engineer with a digital scope could see a difference, but certainly not by reading/writing from the camera or computer.


Additionally,
Formatting in camera or on computer or deleting of files individually (whether on camera or on computer) makes no difference what-so-ever.
The digital format and card-based OS (the actual calls to read/write) are OS agnostic and of a "standard". If the standard was not followed, you'd have a whole host of issues quite immediately. So much so that the manufacturer would have warnings all over the packaging warning people to not use them in their desktop machines. This concept of operating in-cvamera vs on-compuret is ludicrous.

The action of deleting of single files is not going to cause a problem. Regardless of whether it is from camera or from computer.
If the card is bad, you may have issues... but it won't be simply due to any single action behaving differently than any other.

Formatting the card to "fix" problems will also not work. SD cards don't work that way. Actual hard drives don't either, but they don't dynamically alter their accessible bits to the degree that flash memory can. i.e. unlike a spinning hard drive, full formatting flash memory beginning to end by computer will actually result in the same blocks being re-written many times, leaving many blocks untouched.
You really need a special program that will force a write to every bit and not allow SD to dynamically alter where your device it looking. Something like this can help. (https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/) It will do a true end-to-end format and can help shake out bad blocks and allow the card to mark them as unusable. A task that would be extremely difficult or impossible to do with normal use or by formatting in-camera or in-computer.
06-27-2018, 03:45 PM   #29
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QuoteOriginally posted by amoringello Quote
That is not how SD works. Flash memory does not slow down due to fragmentation or storage space. There are no moving parts to contend with to cause any particular read/write to be any slower than any other. (perhaps an engineer with a digital scope could see a difference, but certainly not by reading/writing from the camera or computer.


Additionally,
Formatting in camera or on computer or deleting of files individually (whether on camera or on computer) makes no difference what-so-ever.
The digital format and card-based OS (the actual calls to read/write) are OS agnostic and of a "standard". If the standard was not followed, you'd have a whole host of issues quite immediately. So much so that the manufacturer would have warnings all over the packaging warning people to not use them in their desktop machines. This concept of operating in-cvamera vs on-compuret is ludicrous.

The action of deleting of single files is not going to cause a problem. Regardless of whether it is from camera or from computer.
If the card is bad, you may have issues... but it won't be simply due to any single action behaving differently than any other.

Formatting the card to "fix" problems will also not work. SD cards don't work that way. Actual hard drives don't either, but they don't dynamically alter their accessible bits to the degree that flash memory can. i.e. unlike a spinning hard drive, full formatting flash memory beginning to end by computer will actually result in the same blocks being re-written many times, leaving many blocks untouched.
You really need a special program that will force a write to every bit and not allow SD to dynamically alter where your device it looking. Something like this can help. (SD Memory Card Formatter - SD Association) It will do a true end-to-end format and can help shake out bad blocks and allow the card to mark them as unusable. A task that would be extremely difficult or impossible to do with normal use or by formatting in-camera or in-computer.
Fragmentation does occur in solid state memory. Although there are no moving parts, there is an added computational burden if a large file cannot be written as one contiguous block and must be split into many small fragments. For proof see this test: Flash drive fragmentation: does it affect performance? .

Although formatting won't fix any low-level hardware problems inside the card, it will reset the filesystem which can be corrupted with the camera crashes, if the card is not ejected properly, or if there's a bug in the card firmware, camera firmware, or computer OS such as a discrepancy in how the three vendors have implemented the SD card and USB mass storage standards.

It's also worth noting that it's harder to recover fragmented files than contiguous files if something happens to the card (corruption or accidental deletion).
06-27-2018, 04:19 PM - 1 Like   #30
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The file system used on SD cards is FAT which is prone to fragmentation by its very nature. Deleting images from the SD card has not been recommended as a method since the early days of digital. Even my old Toshiba (2002) digital camera manual suggested that deleting images off of the memory card (not a SD card) would eventually lead to problems. The software provided with the Toshiba camera would copy the images into its file structure, validate that the image was really there, then format the card.

SD cards are essentially hard drives, the file system is common to PC's and is based on Microsoft's FAT file system from back in the MS-DOS days. FAT32 and exFAT are newer variations leading to greater capacity, but they are still FAT systems. While using the SD Associations formatter is a good idea - for troubled cards - the best practice is to copy the images from the SD card (locked if your card reader supports it) and format the cards in camera. This was recommended to me in 2005 by the director of the digital lab at Santa Fe Workshops. I use a PC and they were using, and still are, Mac's.
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