Senpai_Nikon5200
New member
Most of the time it will appen for 2 reason cheap made in China memory card. Or wen you remove the card from a Windows computer without ejecting the card in Windows
Well you edited your post with the tiny tidbit that doing a proper format on the computer checks for, and attempts to correct, bad sectors on the media which is the whole point of my saying that "formatting" in-camera, which does NOT identify or correct bad sectors on the media, is NOT the same thing as doing a full-format on the computer. One of these formatting protocols identifies and potentially corrects bad sectors, the other does not. That seems to me to be a relatively important distinction to make here. I also don't see why bad sectors are any more, or less, important on specific media types since the final outcome, practically speaking, is the same.But there is absolutely no point of clearing the entire card (other than possibly security). OK, it does check for bad sectors and removes them from the disk map (more important for magnetic media than for semiconductor memory cards). But a quick format clears the FAT, which forgets about all files. The file area can be rewritten, and there is no advantage of it being zero before rewriting it. Zeroing all bytes just adds to the writing count (supposedly reducing card lifetime, and certainly increasing the time to do it). It offers no advantage.
And it should be formatted in the camera, which adds an extra file or two (the Nikon DCIM, etc), which also gets recreated by just turning the camera on, but the camera knows exactly how the card should be formatted. Users at the computer may or may not know.
Or wen you remove the card from a Windows computer without ejecting the card in Windows
Because your right, here a picture of my Bob catas a reward![]()
Also, the DCIM/D3200 folders created by turning on the camera are just that: folders (not files). That's also an important distinction to make.
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Is not the same but still pretty close
I'll just point out doing an in-camera "reformat" does NOT reformat the cards file structure (FAT32). The only thing an in-camera reformat "reformats" is the FOLDER structure (i.e. DCIM/D3200 etc.) used by the camera to store photos. These are two HUGELY different things.
To properly reformat the SD Card (which *WILL* over-write all the data and re-create the File Allocation Table (FAT)), you need to do the following:
Put the card in a computer media reader.
Wait for the card to mount as an available drive.
RIGHT-click on the card and select "Format".
Clear the check-box for "Quick Format".
Click "OK".
You'll get a warning about erasing your files.
Continue with the format.
Go make a cup of tea because this is going to take a while.
On my Core i7 computer at home with 16GB of RAM, reformatting a 32GB SD card takes about half an hour. I assure everyone our Nikon DSLR's are not performing this same feat in a fraction of a second when we "reformat" our SD cards in-camera. Lastly and speaking only for myself, any card that fails to re-format properly in my computer, or gives me any kind of error message in-camera, even once, gets exchanged for a new card, or the card gets trashed. They get no second chances, ever.
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