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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-28-2018, 06:56 AM
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Although it is true that the SD card lock is a software feature, do you have any evidence that mainstream operating systems ignore the lock? From what I've seen in MacOS, the lock is respected (although I've never snooped the USB traffic to see if the OS does write to a locked card). With the card locked, images cannot be accidentally deleted, the OS does not write all it's crap files to the card, and a locked card never gets the "cannot be ejected because it is in use" error. Perhaps some types of malware worms intentionally ignore the card's lock bit to propagate the infection but I'd bet that the majority of trojans and viruses in the wild do not do this.
I also use the lock as a convenient reminder that the card is being used and has important data. I always lock my full cards when I swap to an empty one and that makes it easy for me to tell which cards are full and which cards have space. With the card locked, I can't accidentally format it until I'm sure I've got a back-up and that's when I unlock the card.
For the vast majority of users, locking the card will reduce the chance of data loss.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-27-2018, 03:45 PM
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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).
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-27-2018, 08:35 AM
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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.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-26-2018, 05:48 PM
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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.
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