Mystery with my Compact Flash

Background: Needed to pull the pictures off my Sony A350 DSLR camera. This camera takes a compact flash card & I currently use a 8 GB one. Out of curiousity, I decided to check how much space I have left on it. I don't take a lot of pictures so I thought I would have plenty of space. Wrong, nearly 5 GB space is being used. Yet, I only have a little over 800 MB of pictures. The system files the camera uses is 153 MB. I have the computer see to show all files (hidden & system). So, what is eating up 4 GB of compact flash?
CF is formated NTFS and I am using the memory card reader on my HP AiO networked printer (Photosmart C7280) since none of my PCs can read CF & my data cable is missing.
Take a look for yourselves.

That's weird ... does your camera also indicate that there is 5GB of used space on the card (when the card is plugged into it)?

Dunno

Cannot figure out where to do it in the menu...

Also, I deleted some pictures off of it earlier. I did empty the recycle bin. Still 5 GB used.

Can you actually use your computer to browse through the directories on the card manually?

Went to photography class last night and learned more about this mystery. Apparently, deleting pictures off the cf via windows leaves some sort of trace or ghost of the picture on the cf. It is sort of like the pictures weren't actually deleted off the cf.

I am told that if I wanted to delete pictures off the card, I must do so with the camera. And the only way to free the 5 gb off the cf is to reformat the cf with the camera.

And to answer your question: Yes. And doing so got me into this mess. :)

merkat106 said:

Went to photography class last night and learned more about this mystery. Apparently, deleting pictures off the cf via windows leaves some sort of trace or ghost of the picture on the cf. It is sort of like the pictures weren't actually deleted off the cf.

I am told that if I wanted to delete pictures off the card, I must do so with the camera. And the only way to free the 5 gb off the cf is to reformat the cf with the camera.

And to answer your question: Yes. And doing so got me into this mess. :)

... which is why I stick with Secure Digital, which I don't believe has this problem.

Well, please let us know if that solution works for you! :)

BCXtreme said:

merkat106 said:

Went to photography class last night and learned more about this mystery. Apparently, deleting pictures off the cf via windows leaves some sort of trace or ghost of the picture on the cf. It is sort of like the pictures weren't actually deleted off the cf.

I am told that if I wanted to delete pictures off the card, I must do so with the camera. And the only way to free the 5 gb off the cf is to reformat the cf with the camera.

And to answer your question: Yes. And doing so got me into this mess. :)

... which is why I stick with Secure Digital, which I don't believe has this problem.

Well, please let us know if that solution works for you! :)

SD is not compatible with my camera. Sony either uses CF or Memory stick Pro (which is proprietary). Why this camera? Because I was able to get this $700+ camera for about $300.

merkat106 said:

BCXtreme said:

merkat106 said:

Went to photography class last night and learned more about this mystery. Apparently, deleting pictures off the cf via windows leaves some sort of trace or ghost of the picture on the cf. It is sort of like the pictures weren't actually deleted off the cf.

I am told that if I wanted to delete pictures off the card, I must do so with the camera. And the only way to free the 5 gb off the cf is to reformat the cf with the camera.

And to answer your question: Yes. And doing so got me into this mess. :)

... which is why I stick with Secure Digital, which I don't believe has this problem.

Well, please let us know if that solution works for you! :)

SD is not compatible with my camera. Sony either uses CF or Memory stick Pro (which is proprietary). Why this camera? Because I was able to get this $700+ camera for about $300.

Ah, that explains it. I have a Sony camera too, but it's a brand new one that supports SD.

Anyway, now you know why CF isn't the #1 flash storage media format!