Formatting
From The Glossary of Digital Photography
The process of erasing a hard drive or camera memory card by erasing the directory. Erasing camera's memory card should always be done in the camera and not in a computer. The computer may do it in a slightly different way than the camera and later cause corruption or loss of data and images. Always format or reformat a memory card before using it, rather than just erasing individual images. This provides better data safety over the long run.
