Why does a new memory card or flash drive need to be formatted before using it?  All of I get from internet is just a tip to format it before use.  But they don't explain why we need to format it first.
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What does the computer do when we format our hard disk or flash disk. If formatting clears all data on a disk, what is the difference between deleting all files in the disk and formatting the entire disk? Is it bad to format multiple times? How many times can a disk be formatted? Will formatting reduce the lifespan of my drive? What is the difference between quick formatting and standard formatting?
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So, somehow over the weekend, my 1GB USB flash drive has managed to become write-protected.  There is no switch on the stick, so I'm concluding that something has corrupted at some point.  Obviously I can't format it or remove.  The output from dmesg | tail is:  Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 328168 lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1 sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Data Protect [current] Info fld=0x0 sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Write protected sd 73:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Write(10): 2a 00 00 05 08 00 00 00 01 00 Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 328200 lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1   I think the second and final lines are a giveaway to corruption, but I don't know how to interpret this output.  Could someone help to see if this output gives any indication?  I usually eject the drive before removing it, but I may have been lax once or twice.  The data isn't critical, it's just bugging me.  Any suggestions on how to fix it (if the drive even can be) would be greatly appreciated.
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Why is it sometimes that I need to restart my computer after installing new software and at other times I don't?  Is there any reason why it needs this reboot or why it's not always one way or the other?
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Cameras rarely specify exactly what speed cards you should be using in them - I just checked the manual for my DSLR, and all it says is to use an SDHD card, and a "high speed" card should be used for recording video.  On the other hand, there are a number of different rating systems for memory card speed (33x! 150x! Class 2! Class 10!) and price seems to increase with speed.  Is there any way to test the maximum write speed the camera is capable of?  Are the read/write speeds documented anywhere?
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How can I find the file system type of USB drive without using computer? Drive is attached to Android phone and I can see the files in it. I want to know if it is extFAT etc.
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What is the most correct way to delete all photos from a camera after they all have been copied to a computer:    to format memory card using the camera menu,  or simply Select All and Delete photo files from the card using a computer as if it would be just a usb flash drive,  or maybe some other way?   Or no difference at all?
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I have a Canon 20D and was looking to buy a memory card. Turns out there are lots of options that vary in price. This got me wondering, what should I be looking out for when buying a memory card.  Based on some research that I've done, I have some points:   What is the maximum memory size your camera supports ?   From what I can tell, the 20D supports up to 8GB (could not find it in the manual), so anything over that would be a waste. Although I did find some posts where users claim they can use a larger card, as long as they dont format it using the camera. Can anyone speak to that? Personally I might just stick with the limit set by the camera.  Read/Write Speed?   I am still trying to figure this one out. I saw . Essentially the write speed of the card should be higher than that of the camera, which makes sense. However how do I figure out the write speed of my camera? Does anyone know what the write speed of a Canon 20d is?  What brand to buy?   I currently have a SanDisk Extreme 512MB card. That is why I started looking for the same card with a higher capacity. A Kingston or Transcend is approx. $15 while a SanDisk is over $30...  Extreme temperatures?    Not sure how important this is, but I do live where the temperature can go pretty low below 0F. That doesn't mean I will necessarily be doing photography outside in that temperature. What kind of problems do people run in to with low temp?    Are there any other things that I should be looking at?
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I just bought a new external hard drive (). In a PC with Windows 7, I formatted it by Right-clicking the drive > Format (Quick Format - NTFS) before using it and, and then checked out its Properties.     I noticed that it already has 118 MiB of its disk space already used, despite being newly formatted and no files transferred to it.   Questions: Is the disk space occupied by the disk overhead, metadata, etc. correlated to the total disk space capacity of an NTFS-formatted hard drive? If yes, how is it computed? (How much disk space will be 'used' by default on a brand new, newly formatted hard drive, given its disk space capacity and if it is formatted to use NTFS?)  Screenshot of the 1 TB drive's Properties after being formatted:   Related SU question:
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When I plug in my USB flash drive, it shows up on my computer as write-protected or read-only. I am unable to transfer data to it, nor can I modify or delete any files already stored on it. I also cannot repartition or reformat the drive using Windows Disk Management, DiskPart, GParted, or other tools. The drive does not have a write-protect switch.  Why did this happen and what can I do about it? Is there a way to remove the write protection?  (Note that this can happen with some memory cards, too, as they often use controllers similar to those used in flash drives. In some cases, the system may report that the drive or card was formatted successfully even though it was never actually formatted; the original data reappears when the device is reinserted.)     This question comes up often and the answers are usually the same. This post is meant to provide a definitive, canonical answer for this problem. Feel free to edit the answer to add additional details.
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Can you help me? I want to make my flashdisk write protected. So no one can format my flashdisk because the data inside the flashdisk is important.
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Is it possible to find out which files are transferred to an external usb flash drive in certain period of time?   To be more clear. If I/someone have a flash drive and take some data from me. How do I know which files are copied? Finding out file copy hostory could be also a work around.
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My USB drive used to be originally 8GB when I bought it.  I'm trying to reformatted in Windows 7 by right clicking on the drive and selecting Format.... But the capacity only shows 250MB.  Is there something I can do to get the original size back? Maybe it got partitioned in a weird way?   The  flash drive is a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB. I got it from Wal-Mart but this is the same drive.
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I know it's kind of a dead / dying technology, but I was wondering what stops a CD-R from being rewritten like a CD-RW.   Is it some sort of firmware on the disc, essentially in place to make people buy more CDs?  Or is there a more technical reason, ie. CDs store their data magnetically (correct?) but CD-Rs have less magnetism, so once it has been written to, that's it? (Sorry if that's completely wrong; I have no idea how CDs work.)
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Possible Duplicate:          I have a USB flash drive that claims it needs to be formatted every time I put it into my computer (Windows).  Yesterday the drive was healthy and had data on it.  The data is probalby still there.  Are there any free tools to restore the drive?  If not free, what tools are known to work in this situation?
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If you have a private data on a recent, normal hard drive - how many passes do you need to delete the data to make it unrecoverable?  Not in the sense, that a forensic team of 20 experts with a budget of 100 million euro or dollars and 10 years of time to restore a couple of bytes from a known address with 80% accuracy, but few people with a few 1000 €/$ budget, who wouldn't spend more than two weeks on the job, and who don't know where on the drive they are searching.   Linux/GNU shred says in the manual:     -n, --iterations=N           overwrite N times instead of the default (3)   but on the one hand I heard about an NSA suggestion to overwrite 27 times, and on the other hand professional data recovery firms could not recover data from a drive that was wiped just once.   Evidence, papers, proof?  Note: What this question is not:    It's not about bad sectors, where data might slip through It's not about old MFM/RLL-drives from the early 90ies  It's not about different tools It's not so much about the method (random numbers 0s, 0xFF and fancy patterns).  It's not about different techniques to wipe it securely (magnetic power, melting, filling with sand and turning).  It's not about special problems of flash drives
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What do I do to optimize the file transfer rate of a Memory Stick Duo?  The file transfer was not like this when it was still new.  Can reformatting give new life to a memory stick?  It takes about 20 minutes just to transfer 1Gb of file from computer to memory stick. The computer is decent enough. 2.50Ghz processor, 2Gb ram.
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Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade?   To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on the hard drive, like every 5 years or so. Is it true?