Management Files

[Fred22]

I just purchased a Sony DSC-H20 and I'm in the process of setting it up (charging the battery right now). I bought the camera as a birthday present to replace her old Sony Mavica, which is around 7 years old. It's been an excellent camera, bit the discs are becoming hard to find, and we just switched to Vista, which doesn't support the Mavica.

I have a question about formatting. The DSC-H20 uses the Sony Memory Stick ProDuo cards. The manual says: "When you insert a "Memory Stick Duo" media without a management file into the camera and turn on the power, part of the "Memory Stick Duo" media capacity is used to automatically create a management file. It may take some time until you can perform the next operation". I assume this also applies to the Memory Stick ProDuo which came with the camera. Do these memory sticks usually come with a management file or does the camera always have to create one for your specific camera? I assume this is a type of "formatting". When it says it may take "some time until you can perform the next operation", how much time are they talking about? Does it take minutes, seconds, etc?

Fred

[PWhite214]

It just takes around 30 seconds or so depending on the size of the memory stick.

My A200 formats the 4GB datacard in less than a minute.

Phil