Media card care

- One of the great things about the switch from digital was when you were going to an airport, you didn't have to worry about sticking your camera in the x-ray machine anymore. Digital feels a lot sturdier compared to film, but it's still possible for things to go wrong with your media cards, so this week, on The Practicing Photographer, I want to just run through very quickly some quick tips, things you can do to make sure that you don't lose data. Starting with just basic physical care. I used to shoot regularly with an SLR that used CompactFlash cards, and I really, now I'm shooting with SD cards, I miss CompactFlash cards, 'cause they're so sturdy.

Nice, hard plastic case, pins that are internal. I have actually had an SD card split in half on me. It's possible for the case to come open and expose the card. You can, in a pinch, pinch them back together, and a little superglue can get 'em going, but it's just really unnerving, and of course having the actual media exposed is a little bit terrifying. So when you're working with SD cards, it's important to just know that they are physically fragile. Be careful when you're putting them into the camera. Try not to flex in this direction or twist them.

That's how I popped mine open. Somehow I put a little torque on it, and the case just split open. So basic physical care. I shouldn't have to say this. It's a pretty obvious thing. These are valuable, not just as blank media cards, but once they've got your data on them, they become very, very valuable. I actually carry mine in a little SD card suitcase, and what I like about this one is it is waterproof and dustproof, and for tromping around in the desert or getting stuck in rainstorms, I know that my cards that are in here are at least not going to be hurt by the elements. There are lots of different ways of carrying media cards.

You may not need to go this extreme, but something that will at least keep them from being physically bent or manipulated in a way that might split the case. Again, if you do split it, don't hesitate to try and get in there with some superglue. Don't be sloppy, but, you know, try and get them back together. Use a card reader when you're going to read instead of a camera, and probably most people do this, but in a pinch, I will grab my camera and plug it in and use the camera as a card reader. I tend to avoid doing that because it runs my camera battery down faster, and I like to save that for shooting.

Because the battery can drain aster, it's possible to run the battery out in the middle of a dump to my computer, and that can be bad for the card. You don't ever want to interrupt the card when it's reading or writing. So I try to always use a card reader, just because I feel like it's a safer bet in terms of doing a sustained read and write for a long time. Getting back to that idea of interrupting the card, there's probably a little flashing light somewhere on your camera that tells when the camera is reading or writing. Most cameras these days are good about elegantly coming out of a read or write if you interrupt them, so if you open the media card door, most cameras will try to finish the read or write before they shut down the power, but just be careful about that.

Pay attention to that light. Don't interrupt the camera if you don't have to. There are two ways of erasing the contents of a card. You can format a card, or you can do something called erase all. Your camera probably has a menu item for erase all or something equivalent. It's definitely got a menu item for format. Some cameras call this initialize, but for the most part, I see format on cameras these days. Formatting is a better way to go, every single time that you want to erase the card. Formatting writes out an entirely new directory structure for the card. If you consistently use erase all, there's a good chance that one day, you're going to find your card unreadable.

Now, the card is recoverable using special software, but that's a real pain, and you can't necessarily do that out in the field, so this is probably, after just the physical care, the most important thing that I'm going to say here is format your card instead of erasing. This is not some obscure thing that might happen to you once in a lifetime. I have, in classes, seen it happen to lots and lots of students, so format instead of erasing. There's a lot you can do to physically protect your cards, and none of that helps if you just outright lose your card.

One way around this, and I don't actually do this, but I think this is a good idea, take a business card or something every time you format a card and shoot it. Then your name, your email address, phone number, whatever else you've got in there is on there. If a good Samaritan finds your card, maybe they'll contact you and give it back to you. It's a simple way to put a little ownership information in your card. Finally, if you are an SD card user, you may have noticed, but probably never used, this little switch here on the side. This is a lock switch. Right now, this card is unlocked.

If I stick this in a camera, I can write to it. If I flip it up to here, it is now locked. This means that the camera can't write to it, which means that I can't accidentally format it, I can't accidentally shoot more images to it. It also means that if I stick it in a computer to do a transfer or stick it in a card reader to do a transfer, that device, that computer, that tablet, whatever else it is I plugged it into cannot write to it. So, if you keep your cards unlabeled, it's very easy, as you're shooting to bunches of cards to get confused about which ones you've used and not used in a hurry, you might grab one that you're just sure is blank, throw it in your camera, format it, and end up losing some images.

So, as you pull cards out of your camera, flipping this to the lock position will prevent you from doing that. The other day, here at Lynda, we were doing some shooting, or we were doing some testing, actually, preparing for a shoot, and I was sticking one of my cards in a bunch of different devices, and at some point, I put it back in the camera that I was used to using it in, and it threw an error, saying that it couldn't access the card, and I think that's because a lot of other devices had been trying to read and write things to the card. I should have had the lock switch on, because all I was needing to do was read.

If you've got really mission-critical photos that you're getting ready to transfer, consider throwing this lock switch. That will ensure that during the transfer process, nothing happens to your card. Getting back to that question of which cards have you written to and which have you not, if I'm using multiple cards, and these days, I'm rarely on a shoot so long that I'm into lots and lots of cards 'cause cards have such high storage capacity now, but because I have this little case, as I take used cards out of my camera, I put them in upside down.

This gives me an easy way to tell which cards I've shot with and which ones I haven't. One more thing about this locking mechanism. I have, upon rare occasions, run into a situation where, after moving the lock slider back to the unlocked position, the card has continued to think that it's locked, and I haven't been able to do anything with the card. I've gotten out of it by just taking the lock and moving it a few times. It's plainly a physical problem that's going on. It leads me to think that maybe these lock mechanisms aren't super durable, and that the more you use them, the more you shorten their lifespan, so that's something to think about.

Maybe I just got unlucky. I've hardly got statistical data to back this up. My sample size might be a little small, but still, you may consider only locking the card when it's absolutely critical that you not lose data during an image transfer. So, most of this stuff is pretty common sense, and not all of it may be practices that you want to engage in. Still, for times when you're really got the killer shot that you know you don't want to use, consider some of these strategies to help ensure the life of the images that are on your card.