issues with RED RAM Drive

[Jeff Turner]

I might have a new one.
IN midst of shooting scenes involving actors on horses on top of mountain and everything going fine with RED RAM. After lunch noticed that I had about 54% of Drive left. A short while after, hit record and camera gives me an error message saying the thing about record error fault or something. So I wait a moment for camera to reset and it kind of does, the message disappears and the screen goes blank. I shut it down and power back up and everything fine for next hour or so. Then it happens again. I power down camera again but when I power up it says "unformatted" in the drive window. I power down and up a few more times and try a new drive cable but still the same "unformatted" message for the drive. WTF!

I have a couple CF cards so manage to finish shooting the day and have taken drive home and hooked it to computer and all that shows up is a unix file of 66KB!!

Am running REDundead as I type and it seems to be retrieving some of the files. It started on clip 17 so don't know if that means it can't find the first 16 shots of the day?

Has anyone else ever come across something like this before. Makes me very nervous. I am not sure if I can trust that drive again. Its always been my ace in the hole backup but now...

Jeff
River Road Films LTd.
Princeton, BC

 

[Dan Kanes]

Do you have a Red Drive that you could try with the Red Drive Cable you were using? Or perhaps a second Red Drive Cable that you could test with?

Any time I get any kind of record error - the first thing i do is power the camera down and remove the media and connect to a computer.

Red Drive Cables are sometimes the source of Recording Faults and are fairly fragile.

If you don't power the camera down after a Record Fault, something in the buffer or something can cause errors even if you switch to CF media (hence the hard power down)

Maybe someone else has something to add regarding this? Hope you get all your footage back! :cheers2:

 

[Jeff Turner]

I did change the cable but still got the same message. It was only after the new cable made no difference that I powered down and disconnected the RAM drive and then inserted the CF cards to finish the shooting.

I am happy to report that REDundead came through with flying colors!!

It managed to recover all the files so we lost nothing other than a little nervous energy for the days shoot.

But I am still curious as to what exactly happened.

Jeff
RIver Road Films Ltd.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Not sure what happened, but I would test another RAM or Drive on the camera and see if you can duplicate the problem. That RED Ram may need to be sent in for evaluation/repair. A re-partition and zero-format of the RED-RAM can sometimes fix errors with the partition map. I zero-format my drives and RAMs on occasion, and always after I shoot something I can't have others finding on the drive. Who knows if rental customers run RED Undead on your media or not!

...And there's always the possibility it could be a camera problem too...

 

[Jeff Turner]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.
I've got another busy shooting day today but will try some testing when I get a break. Although not sure of how to zero format at the moment I will reformat the drive with R3D Data Manager as well I will be shooting with my Red Drive and will report any anomalies if they occur.

Jeff
River Road FIlms Ltd.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Don't use R3D Data Manager to format. Always format for use within the camera, this is per RED's instructions. To zero-format, easiest way to do that is with Disk Utility; you tell it to erase everything, single pass is fine, under options. It may be smart to re-make the primary partition as well. I'm assuming you're on a Mac for this because you ran RED Undead. After you partition and zero out the drive, your camera will format again when you re-connect it.

If you can duplicate the problem again, see if you can salvage any camera log files. That could be useful for RED to help diagnose the problem. You may also want to see if you have log files from the problem shoot that you can send to Stuart or someone at RED.

 

[Jeff Turner]

Thanks for this JEff.
I have been using R3D data manager to format discs as it was the simplest way to give each days drive its own file number for shot logging.
I didn't know it was not recommended so I will stop this practice.
I did zero out the RAM drive with Disk Utility. Thanks for pointing that out.

I shot all day yesterday with RED Drive and had no issues. I never have with this drive. I am shooting actors again today so will have to wait to test out the RAM drive again.

If I can duplicate the problem I will try to send some log files to RED.
It was such a sudden and severe change with the drive that it surprised me that something so serious could happen without me doing anything but pressing the record button.

Jeff
RIver ROad Films Ltd.