Thanks your your help. The sources on that thread are great.There's no reason to have anything else but the video/photos you're shooting on your SD card when you're flying.
Formatting wipes the card clean and anything on it is gone.
There's some discussion about formatting cards from about half way through this thread.
http://www.phantompilots.com/threads/what-is-file-index-mode-in-pilot-app.42390/#post-385859
Make up your own mind.
Isn't that only true if you do a Quick Format, but not a full format?Formatting doesn't delete the files on the card, in simple terms, it removes and writes a new 'table of contents' that says that the card is 'empty'. All the data is still sitting there but without reference. It can still be recovered with special software - unless new data is written to the card with the new 'table of contents'.
http://www.cardrecovery.com/recover_photos_from_formatted_card.asp