SG9665GC firmware updates and pre release access

TonyM said:
What is the recommended reformat frequency, so I can set my own reminder?
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For what it's worth I only format my cards when I do a firmware upgrade, and that's just to insure it's a clean card with the new F/W to prevent any potential incompatibilities between versions. I've seen no need, or documented reason, to do it any more than that - nor have I experienced any issues that were resolved by reformatting.

This is with 3 SG9665GC's, 2 A118-C's, 1 Blacksys CF-100 and 2 Black Box Brand G1W-H's (also all my dSLR's, camcorders and digital P&S cameras) - other cams may do things to the card that requires more frequent formatting to fix what they 'break'.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)
 
When you get a brand new SD card (or any storage media), always do a full format using a computer. This will completely zero out the card and pick up any bad sectors. Doing this first step will save you a lot of tears down the track.

A quick format simply just clears out file table without checking for integrity.

Do a full format once a year and a quick format every firmware update or couple of months..
 
DT MI said:
For what it's worth I only format my cards when I do a firmware upgrade, and that's just to insure it's a clean card with the new F/W to prevent any potential incompatibilities between versions. I've seen no need, or documented reason, to do it any more than that - nor have I experienced any issues that were resolved by reformatting.

This is with 3 SG9665GC's, 2 A118-C's, 1 Blacksys CF-100 and 2 Black Box Brand G1W-H's (also all my dSLR's, camcorders and digital P&S cameras) - other cams may do things to the card that requires more frequent formatting to fix what they 'break'.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)
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flip9 said:
When you get a brand new SD card (or any storage media), always do a full format using a computer. This will completely zero out the card and pick up any bad sectors. Doing this first step will save you a lot of tears down the track.

A quick format simply just clears out file table without checking for integrity.

Do a full format once a year and a quick format every firmware update or couple of months..
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I absolutely agree with both of you. There is no reason whatsoever to be compulsively formatting memory cards.

Heading into my seventh year of dash cam ownership I can't recall a situation where a card required it beyond an occasional formatting for preventive maintenance.
 
There seems to be a lot of people with a lot of opinions on these things, most with half info at best and often overlapping heavily with wives tales from platter drives of the '80s and '90s. Can anyone point to any manufacturer who recommends such a thing, suggesting any kind of preventative maintenance at all for memory cards? Much less any kind of format as a remedy for any fault with a card? All you're doing is damaging the NAND cells very slightly by adding another write cycle.

Formatting a memory card is necessary when dealing with different capacities and camera hardware due solely to the file system used from the factory vs what the cam supports. That's why you can be prompted to format when when inserting a new memory card into a dash cam. All it's really doing is tossing the old file allocation table and creating a new one in a supported format. That's why it's called "format" in the first place. Why exFAT support in cams is lagging behind I don't know, but even that should go away eventually.
 
Deacon said:
There seems to be a lot of people with a lot of opinions on these things, most with half info at best and often overlapping heavily with wives tales from platter drives of the '80s and '90s. Can anyone point to any manufacturer who recommends such a thing, suggesting any kind of preventative maintenance at all for memory cards? Much less any kind of format as a remedy for any fault with a card? All you're doing is damaging the NAND cells very slightly by adding another write cycle.

Formatting a memory card is necessary when dealing with different capacities and camera hardware due solely to the file system used from the factory vs what the cam supports. That's why you can be prompted to format when when inserting a new memory card into a dash cam. All it's really doing is tossing the old file allocation table and creating a new one in a supported format. That's why it's called "format" in the first place. Why exFAT support in cams is lagging behind I don't know, but even that should go away eventually.
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To answer your question: "Can anyone point to any manufacturer who recommends such a thing, suggesting any kind of preventative maintenance at all for memory cards? "

Well, at least for still cameras (which are increasingly capable of video capture, especially in high end DSLRs) here are the official recommendations from Nikon and Olympus.

memory.jpg
 
Deacon said:
All you're doing is damaging the NAND cells very slightly by adding another write cycle.
.
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formatting in the camera is no issue, you're only resetting the FAT, do it daily and the card is still going to outlive your grandkids, I wouldn't go doing a full format in the computer all the time though

Deacon said:
Why exFAT support in cams is lagging behind I don't know, but even that should go away eventually.
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license fee to Microsoft is why you don't see it everywhere, even the ones that have paid have found it's not as stable for our needs as FAT32 is though, whether that's to do with poor support or other technical issues I'm not sure but it has been more trouble than its worth for a lot of manufacturers
 
Formatting a memory card causes an insignificant shortening of the lifespan of the device. With the current price of memory cards compared to just a few years ago there is no reason to concern oneself with this trifling effect on longevity.
 
That's interesting about exFAT. I wonder what Microsoft's strategy is in that regard. It seems like even thumb drives you get lately are formatted from the factory in exFAT.

Dashmellow said:
Well, at least for still cameras (which are increasingly capable of video capture, especially in high end DSLRs) here are the official recommendations from Nikon and Olympus.
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I wish you had simply linked to whatever source that was so we could see anything else they had to say. Those snippets have nothing to do with the actual condition of the card but are recommendations for highly non-technical users of Point and shoot digital cameras who don't know what file systems are, recycle bins, etc. It certainly does not agree with @flip9 and his recommendation of using a computer to do a full format, much less that such a thing is capable of picking up "bad sectors" much less that such a procedure would be necessary to do so. Essentially there's no real benefit for most people in most circumstances unless it just makes them feel better to have the camera reset the FAT for them each time. Even placebos have value sometimes.

As you mention later, allowing the dashcam itself to reset the FAT causes no real harm. And it can even be necessary to do so the first time you insert a new card. It's just wholly unnecessary as a maintenance item. Though your comment implies that reliability is not a concern, and dashcam owners should approach the availability of cheap memory cards as though it makes them disposable. I would argue that's not the case, especially when the cam can't warn you when the card has failed.
 
Deacon said:
That's interesting about exFAT. I wonder what Microsoft's strategy is in that regard. It seems like even thumb drives you get lately are formatted from the factory in exFAT.
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the 32GB limit for formatting FAT32 is a Microsoft limitation, not a format limitation, all cards and drives larger than 32GB come formatted exFAT

the license for exFAT is expensive, I found it to be flaky for our application so not worth spending the money, I don't know if that's a Microsoft issue or the blame lies elsewhere but if you're paying thousands of dollars for a license fee that has to end up being added into the cost of the product and it doesn't give good results then the way I see it there's no reason to have it
 
Deacon said:
That's interesting about exFAT. I wonder what Microsoft's strategy is in that regard. It seems like even thumb drives you get lately are formatted from the factory in exFAT.


I wish you had simply linked to whatever source that was so we could see anything else they had to say. Those snippets have nothing to do with the actual condition of the card but are recommendations for highly non-technical users of Point and shoot digital cameras who don't know what file systems are, recycle bins, etc. It certainly does not agree with @flip9 and his recommendation of using a computer to do a full format, much less that such a thing is capable of picking up "bad sectors" much less that such a procedure would be necessary to do so. Essentially there's no real benefit for most people in most circumstances unless it just makes them feel better to have the camera reset the FAT for them each time. Even placebos have value sometimes.

As you mention later, allowing the dashcam itself to reset the FAT causes no real harm. And it can even be necessary to do so the first time you insert a new card. It's just wholly unnecessary as a maintenance item. Though your comment implies that reliability is not a concern, and dashcam owners should approach the availability of cheap memory cards as though it makes them disposable. I would argue that's not the case, especially when the cam can't warn you when the card has failed.
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You are attributing statements to me that I have never made regarding FAT and other things here in this thread or otherwise. I was though responding to your very specific question. As for the quoted recommendations from camera manufacturers you can visit their web sites and do your own due diligence. Beyond that I have no interest in engaging in another one of your strident arguments.
 
You didn't get that info from their websites. You made it up entirely and posted an unsourced image of some sort of text.

Ok, you probably didn't, but it's impossible to say unless you back up your assertions with sources. Especially when visually they're identical. Do you not have them? Did you save that from some past post from some other person? Or do you really expect us to believe that you went through all that trouble to hide your sources because you think anyone who doesn't go on a National Treasure style hunt for it on our own to debunk or confirm your claims is simply too lazy?
 
Deacon said:
You didn't get that info from their websites. You made it up entirely and posted an unsourced image of some sort of text.

Ok, you probably didn't, but it's impossible to say unless you back up your assertions with sources. Especially when visually they're identical. Do you not have them? Did you save that from some past post from some other person? Or do you really expect us to believe that you went through all that trouble to hide your sources because you think anyone who doesn't go on a National Treasure style hunt for it on our own to debunk or confirm your claims is simply too lazy?
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Ever since you arrived on the scene here at DCT about a month ago you are chronically argumentative and combative, sometimes aggressively so. Since you are clearly someone who is more interested in polemics than amicable discussion and debate I will repeat what I said in my last response to you, "I have no interest in engaging in another one of your strident arguments".

In the meantime, in my absence why not go have a look at these links:

Nikon - Memory Card Care

http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Learn-An...tting-Started-Memory-Cards-and-Batteries.html

Olympus - Question: Can you provide some tips about memory card usage?

Answer: http://www.olympusamerica.com/crm/oneoffpages/ask_oly/crm_ask_oly_01_11.asp



 
You can dump on me however you like. But there's plenty enough misinformation out there as it is. I don't know where you got the image you posted, but those two links on their own would have been sufficient in the first place and shifted it from being your unsupported claim to simply directing others to the manufacturers. You can take it personally if you want, but I'm not sure I see how that benefits you.

Yes @flip9 made some claims among those made by others, and those were all lumped together in my request for some sort of support for the claims. I'm glad you were willing to step up to shed light on the inspiration for some of them (and directly rejecting others). I just don't know why you'd go through a lot more effort to do so in a way that obscures the sources unless you took some pleasure in it.
 
So your assumption is every NAND cell is perfect out of the box?

If a brand new card cant pass a full format then theres no point of storing any data to it. A full format is a tiny blip compared to the amount of write cycles a dashcam is going to do.
 
The SD org says don't use your computer's built in uilities to format a card. And you're right, a dead card is a dead card. But formatting doesn't help that.

It sounds like a lot of the same kind of stuff floating around when platter drives were all there was. People claimed you should do a low level format or a number of other things they didn't fully understand. Sometimes you can do more harm than good.

You won't hurt anything using the camera to format the card or the utility @jokiin linked earlier. But you will absolutely do nothing to help yourself performing a full format with your computer. You probably won't hurt yourself too badly, either. But don't tell people they should do it ever, much less make a habit of it.
 
Theres a difference between a dead card and a card riddled with bad blocks

Ever tried to retrieve data from the card only to find a heap of CRC errors?
 
No, I only use my computer to perform a full format over and over until I'm satisfied it's been cleaned of all the bad blocks the factory infects it with, which is totally what happens.
 
I thought I'd get better results with licensplates in the dark if I lower the contrast (-1 here) but still not able to read any of them.
Would lowering the EV shorten the exposuretime or does it lower the ISO sensitivity?

I'd like to be able to read plates if anything happens...


 
If anything I would have thought increasing the ISO sensitivity would be better because the it could use a faster 'shutter speed' but the rather generic and basic tests I did showed that you woukd need quite a jump in 'shutter speed' to make plates legible at night and the impact on the overall exposure wiuld be significant.

Then there is the reflective issue to deal with when it's a plate in your headlight beam.
 
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