Im very new to digital and dont understand what formatting or reformatting means? I have a Fuji s5000z which uses xd memory. How do I format,re-format,and finally why do I need to do it? Thanks in advance!

-- chris harrison (lovesguitars@yahoo.com), March 12, 2004

Answers

To format, go into the Menu, Setup, Format. That's all.

Formating prepares the card for the camera to store pix. Reformatting is do do a format after it has been formatted already. It will invariably create a FOLDER and then the actual pix are stored under this folder.

The reason is partly due to the fact that you can store only a limited number of files (ie, pix) in the root directory. this is usually around 150. so if you have a large capacity card, say 256mb or even 512mb, and your camera has been set for low res high compression, you may find that your camera will stop recording images even though it has used up only say 10% of its capacity.

Why do you need to format/re-format? If you have a brand new card, most cameras will recognise that straightaway. It's like the old floppy disks. Some will need to be formatted before use while most can be used from the box. In some situations, if the card has been formatted either in your PC or Mac, the camera will not recognise the "format" and you will have to format the card.

Very often,if your card has been formatted in another manufacturer's camera, your camera may not recognise it and again, you will have to format it so that your particular camera will be able to use it.

If your card is dedicated to just that one camera, after you have been using it for some time, filling it with pix and then deleting them after you have copied them out, it might be a good idea to reformat it.

Finally, if you have a lot of pix on your card and they are in many sub-folders, and you clear them all out, instead of deleting the folders one by one, it is faster to just reformat the card. Formatting (I suspect, but have no evidence to support this) makes for a much cleaner deletion of all files on your card and can sometimes be faster than deleting all images.

One last point about formatting a card for the camera. As far as possible, always format the card with your camera rather than with your computer. The only exception is when your camera refuses to recognise the card. this may be due to format corruption which happens from time to time. Then you may have to format it on your computer and when you stick it back into your camera, you will be asked to format the card again. Do it.

Hope this helps.

-- Lawrence Ho (lywho@tm.net.my), March 13, 2004.