Formatting SD-cards

[coriander]

Which one is better, SD Formatter or Disk Utility?

SD Formatter website:

The SD Formatter formats SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards optimizing with these card’s performance etc.. It is strongly recommended to use the SD Formatter to format SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards rather than using formatting tools provided with operating systems. In general, formatting tools provided with operating systems can format various storage media including SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards, but it may not be optimized for SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards and it may result in lower performance than using the SD Formatter.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/

 

[pedz]

I'm always dubious when claims use the word "may"... My favorite is "Orange juice may reduce the risk of some cancers." That is a totally worthless statement. So, to say that a generic formatter may reduce performance is like saying (to me) that wearing no socks may reduce performance.

It also seems odd that the SD association would not want to promote and teach Windows and Apple the proper technique for using their products since there are competitors out there (CF cards, etc). Its weird that the download wants you to agree to not reverse engineer their code.

You might surf around the Linux sites. Here is an interesting article: http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/5951-formatting-a-sd-card-demystifying/

I could only suggest try it out yourself.