The point of the camera is because it formats cards more low-level than Windows/Linux/etc. because a desktop OS wants to mount the partitions first. Yes you could use fdisk or whatever, but the camera is guaranteed to work and takes like 5 seconds to format.

I think it's reasonable to assume the card the OP is using is "dedicated" for the NIT. Yes obviously backups would be nice.

And http://www.fs-driver.org/ for Windows.