Digital Camera

[sissimarissa]

My camera (Olympus) offers a choice of "Erase all Pictures" and "Format", both of which seem to do the same thing. Is there a difference, please, and should one be used in preference to the other?

[Catso]

The media the pictures are stored on acts like a computer disk drive. Hence, you can delete the pictures, either individually, or the whole lot. OR, you can format the 'drive'. The latter re-initialises the format of the storage media.

If you want to zap the lot, format is probably quicker.

I'd advise you do a format from time to time, anyway, as im my experience the storage media can get corrupted over time, and you'll lose your pictures if it does.

[alfiebrady]

I'd check your manual, but I reckon 'Format' is reformatting your memory card. 'Erase all pictures' is simply doing what it says. Do you find that 'Format' takes longer?
In any case, I'd stick with 'Erase all pictures'.

[alfiebrady]

Oops. I give way to Catso's response above.

[Toureman]

I have just read my Olympus manual, If you use format instead of erase it will also erase "protected data" what is this and will I need it?

Perhaps Catso can tell me.

If you do format without the memory card in, the internal camera memory will be formatted, if you format with the memory card in the card will be formatted.

[stevie21]

My digital camera can save pictures to a main folder or store them in a separate one (I think one's labelled "Business").
When I browse the card on my PC I can see each of these differently named folders. Formatting the memory card deletes all images on the card and also creates these folders - so that the card is ready to use in my camera.

If the card didn't have these folders I'm sure I'd get an error message that it needed formatting.

[fo3nix]

Imagine a brick wall, with your pictures being the bricks. You want to start again now, and take all the bricks off (remove the photos), so you have space to build the wall again with new bricks.

If you press "erase all pictures", then it just takes off all the bricks one by one, leaving bits of dust and mess, and the foundations of the wall.

If you press "format", then it blasts the wall with some sort of star trek-style blaster, which removes all trace of the wall and foundations ever being there, and leaves no dust. Then it re-builds the foundations perfectly, so that you're ready to add more bricks to build the wall all over again.

Both seem to do the same thing to the untrained eye. However, by just pressing "erase all pictures", because the foundations get old, the wall isn't as robust as with the "format" option, and over time the odd brick can become loose (those in the trade call this 'file corruption'). This looseness can make the picture that the brick represents go all messy, or just not appear at all.

Luckily, solid state media like used in digital cameras build very strong walls, but it's still better to use the format option if you want to start again and take loads more pictures (as there's much less chance of having file corruption, because the foundations are so much stronger). I'm sure you can appreciate this!

[Catso]

A very nice metaphor (right word?) Fo3nix, must remember that.

Toureman: I presume 'protected' refers to function many cameras have to 'lock' a particular picture to prevent erasure. You use this to 'save' the pics you want, prior to an 'erase'. All the protected ones remain, all the others are deleted.

Obviously, doing a 'format' will destroy everything, including 'protected' pics, as the whole media is re-initialised.

[sissimarissa]

Thank you very much indeed, everyone. And a special thank you to fo3nix for that brilliant explanation and to Catso for the last post which also explains something I would never have thought of.

[Toureman]

Thanks sissimarissa for asking your question as it led to Catso and fo3nix giving such good answers.

I will format my camera every so often now aswell.