Quote:
Originally Posted by Jadon
How would you format it if the computer could see it?
Cards can be formatted in different ways, and there's no guarantee that the computer's way would be the way a digital camera would do it. I've read that SmartMedia can get corrupted and there are tools to check and fix them. I've fortunately never needed it, so never bought a card reader to handle the situation. |
All expansion cards I've seen are formatted FAT16 or FAT32, depending on card size. (FAT16 up to 2GB, FAT32 for larger volumes.) FAT is a "lowest common denominator" file system that everything can read. I've almost never found it necessary to format a card.
Because the cards use the FAT file system, they are subject to the same problems FAT formatted disks are. The smallest unit of space that can be read from/written to in one operation is the cluster. It's possible for clusters to be marked as used in the FAT table, but not owned by any file. These are "lost clusters", and mightily configure the OS and your applications. The solution is to run CHKDSK, which finds lost clusters and allocates them to files with names like FILE000.CHK in a FOUND.000 directory. The found file fragments can then be examined and (most likely) deleted, restoring the file system to sanity.
Handheld devices that use cards often have a function to format cards in the device, but don't have a way to repair damaged file systems. This is the second reason I like having a USB card reader: I can plug a card into the reader and run CHKDSK on it to fix problems, and I've had several occasions to do so.
It's also possible to defragment a file system on a card, but there is no reason to actually do it. Because it's flash memory rather than a disk, you don't get increased seek time from fragmentation.
______
Dennis