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Easy to pull up information. Not easy to pull up relevant information. ...and largely unanswered questions regarding whether or not it's better to delete files in-camera or re-format the card.
It doesn't matter if you are using a Microdrive, a flash card of any type, a hard drive, or are recording to a bannana peel. The FAT filing system works the same.
A search of Google reveals lots of problems various people have encountered when attempting to format flash cards on various devices
Any troubles in that area are from either, 1) a poorly engineered device or 2) using a card across devices wich use different versions of the FAT file system as jwarthman mentioned. A device that uses at most FAT16 won't reconize a card formated in FAT32 but the device that uses FAT32 can read/write to a card formated in FAT16.
Most devices format in FAT32 anymore due to the size of flash cards these days. Any card 16mb or smaller must be FAT12, FAT16 can go up to 2GB and anything above 2GB is FAT32 (
source). It's common practice to limit FAT16 to 512mb cards or smaller due to space savings using FAT32.
Furthermore, just about any computer running can reconize and read a device formated in the FAT file system. The only limit here is the way it's connected to the computer.
it might be the case that the initial factory format is the most reliable format and that unnecessary formatting of the card might serve no purpose.
Any formating you perform to the card is no different than the formatting done at the factory.[/font]