Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: mshea on May 16, 2019, 03:00:00 pm

Title: Check that card twice before formatting on a Sony A9
Post by: mshea on May 16, 2019, 03:00:00 pm

Maybe other Sony bodies as well. I accidentally formatted the SD card before downloading a second folder on the card. I tried four different data retrieval programs, to no avail. I then took the card to a professional data recovery lab and was told the card was wiped totally clean. It seems Sony does a "low-level" format, instead of a "normal" format (like my Canon bodies). Maybe they'll change that in a future FW upgrade.

So beware!

Title: Re: Check that card twice before formatting on a Sony A9
Post by: Rhossydd on May 16, 2019, 04:22:45 pm

Maybe the best strategy is to just delete everything, rather than format a card if you're expecting to be able to recover images at a later date.

I see why you might find this odd behaviour if you've come from a camera that offers different formatting options, but I'm not sure I'd expect Sony to change this behaviour as many people would assume that formatting a card really does just kill off all the files.
Not everyone will understand the subtleties of a low level format, rather than a 'normal' format.

Title: Re: Check that card twice before formatting on a Sony A9
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on May 17, 2019, 07:55:54 am

That might explain why I found the formatting of cards on a Sony to be slow when moving from Canon

Title: Re: Check that card twice before formatting on a Sony A9
Post by: PeterAit on May 17, 2019, 11:24:18 am

The Sony manual suggests using the format command only when you use the card for the first time. Agreed, a simple "delete all" command would be nice.

Title: Re: Check that card twice before formatting on a Sony A9
Post by: charles.woodrich on May 18, 2019, 07:25:11 pm

Page 162 of the manual instructs to delete all images use the format function.