My experience of using DR400G-HD2 for 1.5 years.

,Quote="Merkury, post: 37750, member: 172"]"Both of them works fine without formatting" I mean REGULAR formatting. It's my fault! I have to explain more clearly what I mean.

You said "defrag regularly to keep them running good". Flash drive (SD card) has no moving parts. The purpose of defragmentation HD is to minimize the disc head movements across the disc while it is reading the data. Less movements - faster data reading. I hope you know that regular formatting and defrag SD cards reduce their life.[/quote]


READ THE WORDS I did not say that

I said Defrag "drives" ( as in HDD's) and format SD cards

From a study done on this

Another possible explanation is that previous observations of high correlation between utilization and failures has been based on extrapolations from manufacturers' accelerated life experiments. [...] Taken as a whole, our data indicate a much weaker correlation between utilization levels and failures than previous work has suggested.
So, if your fear is that the extra work being down to defrag is likely to kill your disk-drive earlier, it seems that it might cause a borderline drive to fail earlier. However, this isn't a strong effect.
Another effect might be observed: If a drive has a lot of read operations per defrag, then the time saved in seeking the right block will add up, and effectively reduce the overall utilization of the the system.


Also SD cards in general have a write cycle life of about 100,000 uses so, if you formatted it once a week you would die long before it does.
 
there's no need to ever defrag as the nature of the product does not create fragmented files anyway
 
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Wow! So much information in this thread. I use 32gb cards from Sandisk, Trident and others. Indeed all come formatted right out of the package. Ready to use. In one year I have had to reformat a card once after the BlackVue would not read it. I do use the SdFormatter program, but I find it interesting the Blackvue formats the card again for you. If Blackvue does not find its files on the sd card it will reformat the card every time. 1st use or you have had it for a year.BlackVue could care less if it is the First Use of a new card.
The BlackVue system creates tons of fragmented files on the card. With re-writing files, of different length running on Linux there is no way for it not to. The problem with the sd cards is that when a file is overwritten there is usually some detritus left over from the old file. Add that to the fact that sd cards have a secure area that can get very screwed up. That is the reason to use SDformatter. It wipes the entire card. The Blackvue / Linux Formatter does not erase everything especially in the Secure Area.

And in my opinion a 12000 bit rate does not produce a better video experience except it eats the space on the card right up. I ran 1.009 for a few days and could not wait to get back to 1.005. Better video. The leaves in my trees have great separation.

Off topic, but the number one thing I did that greatly improved my video was....to install a matt finish black Dashmat. Reflections gone! Better even than the CPL lens I some times use.
 
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there's no need to ever defrag as the nature of the product does not create fragmented files anyway

Well I don't know about that as I just stuck my 16gb out of the 350 in my PC and defragged it Took about 40 mins to do a 3 pass defrag so must have been something there to tidy up.

Don't intend doing it again but there you go.
 
Windows PC pick up and dump files anywhere which creates fragmentation, putting things back in order can speed things up marginally, more so on older versions of Windows
 
Windows PC pick up and dump files anywhere which creates fragmentation, putting things back in order can speed things up marginally, more so on older versions of Windows
Linux is no better at file allocation. Both Linux and Windows took formatting routines from SCO Unix. Writing 1 minute files on top of 3 minute files, or vice-versa, creates fragmentation.
Yes I agree using the sdformatter. I've done both the quick and long erase of the cards. I've yet to find a benefit of the long wipe. That does not mean it is without benefit. I would use it to try to rescue a seriously damaged card. Otherwise the short one wipes the FAT and the SA. The card will then write consecutive files until filled up and then start fragmenting again.
In my opinion the entire issue of sd cards is way overblown. I believe BlackVue themselves put the dreaded Fear of the Format into everyone's skulls by telling everyone to reformat the card anytime the cameras had any issues whatsoever.
There ya go!
 
Off topic, but the number one thing I did that greatly improved my video was....to install a matt finish black Dashmat. Reflections gone! Better even than the CPL lens I some times use.

I'm using polarized film. It improves picture quality so much! No reflections.
 
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