MS-DOS Format

pedz

pedz

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I have a 4G microdrive connected to via a USB card reader to my system. I start Disk Utility and ask it to "Erase" the drive. It takes several minutes to do this. In my camera, it takes about 3 seconds. What is the Mac doing? (I do not have any of the options like write all zeros checked.)
 
On your camera, are you selecting "Format," or are you selecting "Erase?" Mac OS X is probably formatting the card, while your camera is merely erasing all the data on the card, which is much faster...

Does your camera offer both "Format" and "Erase?"
 
The camera has "delete all pictures" which I never use and it has "format". But I'm sure you are correct. The camera is only blasting the directory structure. What I'm surprised about is the Mac. With today's drives, I thought format was basically a thing of the past. What does a "format" do? It isn't like the old floppy drives where it has to put down the sectors on an otherwise empty track is it?
 
All storage media needs formatting. Not a thing of the past.

[size=-1]Formatting is organising and marking the surface of a disk into tracks, sectors , and cylinders.[/size]
 
Yep, I remember the days when drives did not come pre-formatted, and formatting the drive was nexessary before you could use it. And fast-formatting (simply writing a new directory structure, not marking each individual sector) didn't even exist.

As for the Mac taking more time than the camera to format the microdrive, it could also be that the camera has a direct interface to the microdrive, while the Mac (depending on the model you have) has access to the microdrive through a slow USB 1.1 connection.
 
Sorry for the massive bump, but I'm getting the same problem. It's terrible. I've been waiting for this compactflash card to format in MS-DOS format for about ten minutes now, and it's only a 1 GB card. What's going on here? I'm on a MacBook 2.0 GHZ, no way it's got "slow usb 1.1" ports...
 
then there is the possiblity that the drive is damaged. see if you can format it in another machine, or your camera.
 
Maybe... My experience is that it is basically extremely extremely slow.

Go off to dinner or something and come back. I bet you it finishes eventually with no errors. Apple totally busted it. And, it isn't really doing a low level format. Its just slow.
 
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