Check that card twice before formatting on a Sony A9

[mshea]

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!

[Rhossydd]

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.

[Martin Kristiansen]

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

[PeterAit]

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.

[charles.woodrich]

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