How To Reformat an SD Card?

[RHPConsult]

The family “project” that generated my now-resolved PSE3 query yesterday, has produced some additional fallout that is equally puzzling. . . perhaps more so.  Here.

This task with our scanned photos has two goals: a PowerPoint slide show for a 90 birthday celebration planned for my son-in-law's grandmother AND putting those same photos in a digital picture frame for her to enjoy after the party is over.

Now, here’s the really curious bump in that road, for me at least. My daughter has assembled and prepared about 150 pics for display in the frame. I started last evening to load them on a 2-GB Kingston SD card. However, “it’ (the card) stopped receiving at about 90 (roughly 15 MB worth) declaring that insufficient “free space” was available for loading more! Oh yeah, only 1,950 MB, I would estimate, remaining to be used. Those 90 displayed quite nicely, however, when we tested them.

Since this SD card has been used before in other devices, I am assuming that the card probably needs to be formatted, to somehow "recover" the missing capacity. But . . .

Question 1:  Why would/did the card balk at swallowing such a tiny portion of its recognized/declared capacity?

Question 2:  How does one reformat an SD card? The Brookstone digital picture fame has no built-in mechanism to accomplish such an action, that I can find. When the card's icon appears on my desktop (in my ZIO multi-card reader), of course, there is the possibility of erasing the tiny “drive” in DiskUtility, but what about re-formatting? Is that some kind of a generic process, so to speak, as far as anyone knows, that DisUtility can accomplish with ease? I certainly don’t want to render the card unusable for the picture frame. It seems like a no-brainer, but I’ve gotten in trouble in the past believing such things!!

Help, again!  Please.

[tacit]

Erasing the drive in Disk Utility is reformatting it. Make sure you use MS-DOS (fat16) format; other devices can not read a Mac-formatted card.

[RHPConsult]

Thanks, Tacit.

That's a relief.

Any idea what might possibly be "going-on" in that tiny card soSrtu that it won't accept but a minor fraction of its capacity?

Stuff Happens?

[RNKIII]

RHP...

From the digital photography class I recently took.. I know that the photo quantity 'capacity' for SD cards varies widely based on the 'size'/pixel count of the photos being placed on them...

Are all the photos the same size???   Are they all "large" or could they be 'reduced' in size/pixel count??  This may help increase the count capacity..

But, then again, what do I know?!?!?


Bob K.   rnkiii

[RHPConsult]

Apparently a heck of a lot more than I do, Robert!!!

Harv speculated about something like that this morniing in a sidebar conversation. We also wondered if perhaps Brookstone has some kind of built-in limit in it's device.

Would you guess from your "academic" endeavors, that a 4 gig card would "acceot" twice as many pixels as my present 2 gig puppy.

Here's where I am now:

1. The reformatting went w/o incident. . . . consuming, oh, 8 seconds!
2. The default formatting in DiskUtility was precisely as Tacit recommended.
3. I have again tried to upload the desired 151 photos, however precisely the same 90 that "filled-it" last night (with 1,940+ MBs  "available") did it again.
4. All photos are between 200 and 300 kb, mostly identical, the differences being primarily square vs rectangular. b/w vs color. Many extend bak 50-75 years, though all seemingly scanned reasonably well.
5. Too many pixels, rather than too many kbs appear to be the answer.

And thank you all

[Xairbusdriver]

It might also be helpful to know what the "Native" display spec are. The screen has a specific number of pixels ( height times width ). Trying to display an image with a larger number of pixels will just force the devices cpu/brain to decide which ones to discard. You may be able to make the images much slammer by creating copies for the device at the at the 'standard' size it 'likes' to begin with.

The fact that the card is what is refusing to accept any more files while connected to your computer, I assume, may simply be a limit to the 'fixed/hard-wired' directory blocks of the card. It probably has absolutely nothing to do with picture frame display. I'd suggest contacting the maker of the card and ask why they are fraudulently advertising greater capacity than is actually possible!

[gunug]

I use a formatter for SD chips that runs on my iPAQ organizer (which uses them for secondary storage) and with it I can format MS-DOS format either Fat-16 or Fat-32.  I had to use Fat-32 to allow it to properly use a 2-Gig chip in my camera and my iPAQ; I suspect that this is a "firmware" limitation of some sort but I don't have any idea how this would apply to this situation.  This utility can also check and repair formatting problems although repair hasn't been necessary yet!

[Jack W]

Dick,

Are you trying to use this card on a Mac, or a DC or something else?

If you are only going to use it on your Mac, I would suggest formatting it with Disk Utility in HFS+ format.

I've got a 2GB CF card and a 2GB SD card that I have done this with on my G4 and they work great. No problems at all loading to full capacity.

If you mount it on your computer, check to make sure the trash is empty.

If you are going to use them in a digi cam, then format them in the camera.

HTH, Jack

[Paddy]

Dick, in all likelihood, someone removed photos from the SD card but then didn't empty the trash. When you do that, the photos become invisible but the space is not freed up. Follow Tacit's advice - you should be fine. (Do NOT format for Mac - the card won't be recognized either by the frame or in any camera)

[RHPConsult]

I emptied the trash after cleaning out the images "by hand", Paddy. All in an effort to increase the "receptiveness" of the card, given 1,900+ MB "free space" when it was reporting no more than 90 images (<20MB total) could be uploaded for lack of "space" . . . a second time . . . and even a 3d.  

Reformatting went uneventfully, according to Tacit's advice.  

It's RNKIII's experience that's seems to be dispositive.  

Yes, ABD, I am inquiring of Brookstone, SanDisk and Kingston. (Film @ Eleven)  

Jack: See my question Nr 2 in my initiating post: It's for a Brookstone digital picture fame that has no abilities other than projecting what's on one of several alternative types of cards.

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

It's for a Brookstone digital picture fame that has no abilities other than [displaying] what's on one of several alternative types of cards.

Maybe you just need to hang the frame on a larger wall!

[RHPConsult]

Research Report! . . . .Just in case you're interested . . .

SanDisk TechSupport has made the following declarations to me "over the phone" re: the number of photos that may be stashed on 3 sizes of its SD cards. He wanted to know how many megapixels were resident in "my" camera" and it took awhile (3 repetitions) to convince him I was calling about a digital picture frame display not a digital camera.

Since our varied picture collection - age 2-3 months to 75+ years or so - are mostly 72 dpi (with some up to 120) and all are now 4x6 mol after scanning, I was interested that I had already empirically tested one of his assertions . . . I guess.

Over the past few days, I always got 90 pics onto the 2 GB SanDisk card (in 3 repetitions). SanDisk "guarantees" 87, I am told.

Interestingly, there is a rough linear relation between 1 gig "capacity" @ 43 pics and 2 gigs @ 87 pics and 4 gigs @ 175 pics.

This should should enliven your dinner table conversation(s)

[Xairbusdriver]

The "answer" seems both incorrect and illogical. The number of images on the card should not be governed by any "average" size of images from any camera ( which is what it sounds like the guy was saying ). If that is indeed true, I'd ask for my money back. The card should simply take whatever it is offered until and when it can no longer hold more data. Every camera I've ever heard of can save images in several different 'qualities' if not actual formats. The lower the quality, the more images it will expect the card to hold. Period.

I might call Kingston back and ask for another opinion. While the dpi is certainly an important factor in the size of the image file, it is more important to know the total pixels in it. Simply place all the images in one folder and do a "Get Info" on it. This should give you a better idea of the total bytes of all those images. If that, indeed, is similar to what the card claims it can hold, then the 'space remaining' value is simply bogus.

That being said...
It looks like your only solution will be to reduce the 'quality' of every image. Don't worry about doing this all in one swell foop, however. Here's a suggested test procedure:
1. Create a testing folder ( in the same folder as the current images is fine).
2. Option-drag a random selection of say 10 of those images into that new folder.
3. Do a "Get Info" on the folder and note the size.
4. Open Elements and try the "Process Multiple Files..." in the File menu. You should be able to select a lower quality jpeg ( 70% ) and have all those 10 images saved in the new 'quality'. Wouldn't hurt to have a logical pre/suffix added to each name.
5. Do another "Get Info" on the folder with just the newly saved batch of images. You are shooting for a value that will allow the whole batch of images to be placed on the card, of course.

[ClayEM]

QUOTE(RHPConsult @ Jun 7 2007, 02:12 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The family “project” that generated my now-resolved PSE3 query yesterday, has produced some additional fallout that is equally puzzling. . . perhaps more so.  Here.

This task with our scanned photos has two goals: a PowerPoint slide show for a 90 birthday celebration planned for my son-in-law's grandmother AND putting those same photos in a digital picture frame for her to enjoy after the party is over.

Now, here’s the really curious bump in that road, for me at least. My daughter has assembled and prepared about 150 pics for display in the frame. I started last evening to load them on a 2-GB Kingston SD card. However, “it’ (the card) stopped receiving at about 90 (roughly 15 MB worth) declaring that insufficient “free space” was available for loading more! Oh yeah, only 1,950 MB, I would estimate, remaining to be used. Those 90 displayed quite nicely, however, when we tested them.

Since this SD card has been used before in other devices, I am assuming that the card probably needs to be formatted, to somehow "recover" the missing capacity. But . . .

Question 1:  Why would/did the card balk at swallowing such a tiny portion of its recognized/declared capacity?

Question 2:  How does one reformat an SD card? The Brookstone digital picture fame has no built-in mechanism to accomplish such an action, that I can find. When the card's icon appears on my desktop (in my ZIO multi-card reader), of course, there is the possibility of erasing the tiny “drive” in DiskUtility, but what about re-formatting? Is that some kind of a generic process, so to speak, as far as anyone knows, that DisUtility can accomplish with ease? I certainly don’t want to render the card unusable for the picture frame. It seems like a no-brainer, but I’ve gotten in trouble in the past believing such things!!

Help, again!  Please.

Dick,
Have you tried putting the card in a camera and reformatting it?
Seems like I remember having problems with a SD card I had erased on my computer and the camera format straightened it out.
Just a thought,
Clay

[RHPConsult]

Hi, Clay:

Nice to see you around these parts, again.

The reformatting went quite smoothly via Disk Utility.

The remaining puzzle is the accuracy of the data with respect to "capacity" when dealing with image files rather than MB/GB of Text files.

Working' on it.

Thanks