What is the benefit of formatting your SD Card?

[KaskaA]

I am curious as to what is the benefit of formatting your SD Card. What does it do? Why would you do it? And if your were to do it, and you copied all of your files onto your PC, formatted, and then copied them right back, would that make a difference?

 

[El Presidente]

If you had a file on there that was causing problems, then copying to PC, formatting, then copying back would really make no difference at all.

Sometimes, it's good to start from a clean slate, and a format should only really be used as a last resort (like a factory reset on the handset itself).

 

[AndroidSPCS]

I think formatting your SD card may help if the file system on the card gets corrupted. Sometimes it just helps to start with a clean slate.

I don't do it often, but I usually don't have many issues with my SD cards either. Knock on wood.

 

[MyNamesTooLong]

I only format the cards I come across in my buying and selling...its like an sd card factory reset

 

[takeshi]

Same as formatting anything else. If the media isn't formatted you can't use it until it's formatted. If it is formatted and has stuff on it you'll have a clean slate to start from.

And if your were to do it, and you copied all of your files onto your PC, formatted, and then copied them right back, would that make a difference?

Not if the card is working properly to begin with.

 

[bitsybobsy]

I think there are a few reasons formatting is done, first being file system compatibility and second two really remove data from your memory. I think if the card is working properly, there is no need to format anything unless u want to securely remove information. Copying to elsewhere and formatting it then copying it back would either clean the files that are still in the memory(although u can't see it) or fixing corrupted file system