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HELP! Sudden RED Drive problem. . . I can't get my footage off the drive!

Stephen Pruitt

Stephen Pruitt

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Hey guys. . .

This is a very sudden, very urgent problem.

We have been shooting our second feature using two R-X cameras and two RED Drives. All fall, we've had no issues at all with our drives (maybe five instances of dropped frames, but that's nothing).

Copying the data was a breeze. Just daisy chain my two external storage drives via Firewire 800 to the RED Drive and away we go. NO issues at all.

Until today.

For some reason, the newer of our two drives (640 gig version) won't be recognized by our computer (MacBook Pro). No changes were made to any software at all. Nothing. And it won't work on Firewire 400, either. But the second drive (the older 320 gig version) is downloading just fine.

When I plug the drive into the computer, it starts and spins, but the drive icon never shows up on the screen. It doesn't matter how long I wait. But when I pull the cable out, it says "this drive was not recognizable by this computer." Very strange.

When I plug the drive into the camera, it works just fine, plays back just fine, etc.

We need to get this data off the RED Drive and into our computer system ASAP so that we can continue to use this camera.

Any suggestions as to what might be going on here?

Stephen
 
And, by the way, there is no recognition via USB, either.

Nothing.

And this thing has been fail-safe until now.

What's going on here? More importantly, how can I get this data off that drive? We do not have an eSata port except on the camera.

Stephen
 
if the computer isn't recoginizing the drive, there is probably an issue - drop a ticket -

the good news is that RED can probably pull the data for you when you send it in, so it's unlikely you have lost anything. you may not be able to use that drive for awhile, though.

did you try running it with the adapter? a little extra juice helps.
 
Try offloading on a PC instead of a Mac.
 
I'll try with a PC. I did plug in an adapter, but there was no change.

What a bummer.

I'll have to file a ticket. I can't loose that footage.

Stephen
 
Stephen, I had the same here a couple of weeks ago. Then I connected it with USB to the PC. After waiting about 45 min. it mounted. Then I could download until a corrupted file (2GB section of a 20 min. shot) appeared. This caused the problem. I deleted the 2GB file and everything worked well again. This is not the first time I experienced that one corrupted file made it nearly impossible to get a drive (or CF card) mounted.
So my advice: Plug it again and wait, wait, wait...
Hope this helps,

Marc
 
Marc Berger said:
Stephen, I had the same here a couple of weeks ago. Then I connected it with USB to the PC. After waiting about 45 min. it mounted. Then I could download until a corrupted file (2GB section of a 20 min. shot) appeared. This caused the problem. I deleted the 2GB file and everything worked well again. This is not the first time I experienced that one corrupted file made it nearly impossible to get a drive (or CF card) mounted.
So my advice: Plug it again and wait, wait, wait...
Hope this helps,

Marc
Click to expand...

After deleting that 2GB section, was the rest retrievable?
 
Marc Berger said:
Yes, the rest was perfect.
BTW it took once 1 1/2 hour before the drive was recognized. I had this problem until now once with the drive and 3 times with 16GB CF cards.
Click to expand...

I mean the rest of that particular corrupted clip? Not the other clips on the drive.
 
ericyoung said:
I mean the rest of that particular corrupted clip? Not the other clips on the drive.
Click to expand...

I only lost the 2GB section. The rest of the clip was fine. I could not figure out why this particular 2GB section was corrupt. Everytime I tried to move or to open it, my whole system crashed. So I can´t say why it was corrupted (dropped frames?).
 
Thanks for the additional information Marc.

I'm assuming you just dealt with the other additional 2GB chunks as standalone R3Ds and possibly made new folders and Quicktime proxies for them.
 
ericyoung said:
Thanks for the additional information Marc.

I'm assuming you just dealt with the other additional 2GB chunks as standalone R3Ds and possibly made new folders and Quicktime proxies for them.
Click to expand...

Eric, actually I´m working with CS5 on PC, so I deactivate the Quicktime proxies in the cam anyway. The last time it was a 20 min. clip, but after this one corrupted file was missing, I had to load the other 2GB files one by one into CS5. It did not load anymore like one long clip.
But hey, I had 1 1/2 hour of footage saved and lost only 1 min. (and some hours of sleep ).
Cheers,
Marc
 
First of all - always use the external power supply with the RED Drives and you shouldn't have problems with burning the FW ports. If you're absolutely sure that it's not a problem with the computer (remember the Mac shuts off the firewire ports in any case of a power surge or if you try to draw to much power from the port) then you could try and open the drive and connect the drives to another (similar) RED RAID and see if that will let you offload the footage. I have used this procedure before when helping out a client with a drive that contained a full day of shooting. Since then they always call me in as a DIT ;-)

If you suspect the computer to be the problem, then reboot it and do a repair permissions and another reboot. Then try again - or try another computer.

Since you're saying that you can still use the drive on the RED via the SATA-Lemo port that makes me think the logic board might be partially fried.
 
I've had this issue with several 320 drives recently. THey are only coming up when they "feel" like it regardless of the cable or computer used. WHAT'S GOING ON?
 
I was never able to successfully get the drive to link up with any Mac, but I did manage to get it to sync with an old Dell laptop. It is now copying over to a second RED drive (320 gig), and I'll know tomorrow (I'm using USB 2.0 and it's taking FOREVER) if the data is preserved and successfully copied over to our regular archival drives.

This is all so very strange. And it is a practically brand new drive, too.

I would love it if RED could come up with some way to download footage straight from the camera.

Stephen
 
I just wanted to update everyone on the situation with my drive.

I was eventually able to download the footage using a PC and the USB connection. All of the footage I tested worked just fine.

I then reformatted the drive and it has connected just fine with my Mac ever since.

Very strange.

Can't imagine what happened there, but all's well that ends well.

Stephen
 
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