Should I reformat the SD card from my old camera using my new camera?

[Clueless in Seattle]

I'm wondering if the formatting systems of different devices are compatible.

For example, I just received a hand-me-down digital camera from a Freecycle group. Before recycling my old damaged digital camera I pulled the SD card from it, and now I'm wondering if it's OK to just pop that old SD card into my "new" camera, or if I need to use the new camera to reformat the old card before using it.

I guess what I'm really asking is if there is a universal technical standard for formatting SD cards that applies to all (or most all) devices. For example, could SD cards formatted on laptops, PCs, phones, cameras, audio recorders, etc. be freely exchanged between different devices without regard to which device they were formatted on?

 

[tsnor]

There are several standard file system / formats for flash card, but here are two reasons to reformat the card. If you have photos on the card you'd want to copy them off before you reformat.

1. Flash cards work by trapping charges (electrons). Over time some electrons escape. When a flash card is used the charges get refreshed as part of the block clear process. An idle flash card in a powered off camera will eventually have broken files and file descriptors. You want to format the card to get all new charges so the risk of a broken file system is smaller. Note this is a real problem and most major flash card makers have tools for recovering photos/files that you can use if the file system gets corrupted.

2. Some camera used to need their own spin on flash card format. It's rare now, but the card could be coming from a camera that had slightly non-standard file system format. A fresh format fixes that.

 

[Sohom]

yeah most of the time, but sometimes the file system maybe different, though quite rarely. Its just like ntfs for windows, mac os extended journaled. I would advice you to format it to exfat or fat32 using your pc and you should be able to use it anywhere.

 

[USAFRet]

Format the card in the new camera.

 

[Clueless in Seattle]

Thanks for those speedy and helpful replies!