I have been wondering about this. I had a SanDisk that was like my trusty main card for years, and one day after writing a glowing review of it, bam, dead.

One thing about that card was that I used to format it probably 9 out of ten times I went to erase it, if not more. Was I shortening the life of my card? I have gotten into the habbit with my new 1 and 2 gig cards of using the "All Erase" option, and just formatting maybe once a week. Is this a better method, or is there no real difference as for as card life goes? I always figured a format was better because of any possible digital residue from erased images.