Is formatting a P2 card a bad thing?

V

vanvideo

Veteran
I was told by a TV news crew that too much formatting of a P2 card can result in damage to the card. They said it's better to delete each clip individually. Is this true?
Sounds kind of crazy to me. I always thought you should format a card before you reuse it on a new project.
 
i Think I know where they might be coming from. The P2 card being solid state would manage data in a similar way to a SSD drive in a computer. On SSD. when you save something to it, the drive's controller saves the data to a particular part of the memory array. Next time you save something, the controller saves it to a differant set of cells in the array.

This is because the memory cells on solid state media can only be written to so many times, the controller intelligently spreads the data around the memory cells using wear levelling algorithms.

Using the SSD analogy, if you did a full format, it would erase all cells on the drive. If you just delete the clips, you're only affecting the cells currently saved to. I would imagine a full format would slightly shorten the life of the drive, compared to just deleting all clips.

I dont know what type of memory P2 cards use (i Know theyr'e internally raided though), there are 2 major types (SLC/MLC), one has a much higher write level than the other. I wouldn't think it would be a problem though as the P2 cards controller would be wear levelling itself and the amount of writes we would put them through shouldn't be an issue. We also don't know how Panasonic have set up the drives controllers, either way, they should give many years of good use :)
 
P2's been in use for over 9 years now, IIRC. So yeah, if there was a problem, we would have heard about it long ago.

And I wouldn't be surprised if a rep did tell them that; I've heard reps say wacky things before. But in my experience and in the years of running this board and hearing people's experiences, I don't think I've ever heard of a P2 card failing, and our standard advice here is to reformat the cards.
 
Wow, that's a far cry from the days in the Panasonic booth when we used to throw P2 cards against walls, slap them up against video screens, grind them under our feet, and all kinds of other things to show that they're nigh unto indestructible. Those were fun days.
 
Manually deleting all file in each folder in trying to prolong P2 life is a bit on the extreme frugal side and not always possible in the field. I mean come on, you're not going to lug around a laptop or go to P2 thumbnail and manually delete them all? And if it's, your current P2 card will become obsolete before you can use it all the way to the end of its useful life. Class 400 will eventually make anything below it practically disposable.
 
It is always better to re-format before each use as it will re initialise the directory structure, I've had all my cards for over four years now and have not had a single dropped frame or problem.

You can just delete clips to get rid of junk but as said it is always best to re-format in the camera if you are starting a new project or job!
 
So called TV technicians are so misinformed these days. Especially when it comes to P2 technology. A respected colleague of mine recently advised me not to ever HOT-SWAP P2 Cards on the HPX cameras. He quoted a TV Technician as his source for this misguided piece of advice.
 
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