USB Cable vs Card Reader?

My camera came with USB cable to download images from.  Is there an advantage of using one over the other?  I have a card reader, but forgot I had this USB cable. 

Each to their own style?
I never plug in my camera.
I end the day in a coffee shop where I take in the laptop and the card/card reader.
Then I sit and process for an hour or two.
No camera to carry in and worry about.
(I had one stolen in a restaurant, but sharp waitress picked up something fishy, got it back a few street blocks further.)

I use my USB cable because it also charges my camera. It can also be convenient on trips.

That being said, as long as both offer fast speeds (3.0/blue) connections, it shouldn’t matter much. 

What does matter, however, is how you delete photos. I believe most in-camera deletes are recoverable, while deleting photos manually from a card reader or your computer will not be. 

Hassner wrote: I never plug in my camera.

   Same thing here!

Troponin wrote: What does matter, however, is how you delete photos. I believe most in-camera deletes are recoverable, while deleting photos manually from a card reader or your computer will not be. 

Why do you think this?

SD cards (etc) use a FAT32 filesystem. "Deleting" is a matter of clearing the directory entry, nothing more. Doing that in the camera or on a computer is exactly the same operation. A file is just as recoverable after either method.

So I'll go with "no, it doesn't matter." Doing so in a camera is painful, however. And one should simply be re-formatting the card to clean it up.

garyrhook wrote:

Troponin wrote: What does matter, however, is how you delete photos. I believe most in-camera deletes are recoverable, while deleting photos manually from a card reader or your computer will not be. 

Why do you think this?

SD cards (etc) use a FAT32 filesystem. "Deleting" is a matter of clearing the directory entry, nothing more. Doing that in the camera or on a computer is exactly the same operation. A file is just as recoverable after either method.

So I'll go with "no, it doesn't matter." Doing so in a camera is painful, however. And one should simply be re-formatting the card to clean it up.

I seem to be on a roll today. I had it backwards. This guy worked for Lexar. 

www.diyphotography.net/not-delete-images...y-card-using-camera/

Troponin wrote: I seem to be on a roll today. I had it backwards. This guy worked for Lexar. 

www.diyphotography.net/not-delete-images...y-card-using-camera/

Ha-ha! Yes, we all agree that cards should be formatted in camera.

However, that article has some misinformation in it.

1) This generalization is without merit. Your camera is perfectly capable of deleting images. However, it's a laborious process, and if you remove the card while it's being written to, you'll corrupt the filesystem. Which is the biggest problem we want to avoid. By choosing to only format and create images, you avoid potential problems, and wisely so.

2) Regarding sharing cards among devices: that's not generally a problem. The FAT32 filesystems is simple enough, and has been around long enough, that reasonably modern cameras are not going to contain bugs in their firmware, and this isn't going to be a problem. If one finds a specific problem, it's likely due to one or both camera models involved. Not a general issue. And alluding to "problems down the road" is just irresponsible.

Oh, and there's no "formatting a certain way". #eyeroll FAT32 is FAT 32, and it's the same everywhere. I've set to see a camera put anything special on a card that caused problems with using that card elsewhere. Even if a camera did put something on a card, it would be only for use by that model. No other camera would care as long as the formatting was per the standard.

3) "Formatting after each shoot. Cleaner on the card." Wait, what? If you are only writing to a memory card with the camera, there's no "cleaning" required.

4) Set your card to read-only, and any ol' reader will suffice. The only way a reader can corrupt a card is by writing to it. So his anecdote is suspect, and (on the surface) without merit.

5) Wait... what? That's just dumb. Blocks in a filesystem are written however the software using the filesystem writes to them. Most (all?) are going to allocate contiguous blocks of spaces on the device and write the file sequentially. This means that there won't be gaps between blocks of data, which means that performance won't suffer. So again, meritless claim.

6) Well, duh.

7) Again, duh.

Eight) A good idea. But he forgot to mention "non-counterfeit". Just sayin'.

Granted, I only have (not quite) 40 years of experience with computers, operating systems and filesytems, but that guy doesn't completely know what he's talking about.

Makes sense. Thanks.