CF Cards Not Mounting Issue

[Adam Bricker]

Receiving reports from a feature that's using my camera that 16 GB CF cards sporadically refuse to mount to camera. I've been to set a couple of times and have not been able to replicate the issue first-hand. I've upgraded firmware on the M-X Body, but the camera department informs me that the issue persists. Any troubleshooting suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Dear Adam,

The first thing I would try is to take the CF cards into Disk Utility on a Mac and re-format them as a single FAT32 partition. The next time you put the card in the RED Camera, it will come up as "Unformatted Media," after which you will have to re-format the card in camera, restoring it's status as a 'RED' CF card.

However, if that doesn't work, I have come across some bad CF cards that for whatever reason didn't get their firmware updates when RED was offering them, and as such are simply unreliable. I had a shoot where a batch of CF cards suddenly died in-camera, and RED determined they had not been sent in for a necessary firmware update, which sadly, was no longer being offered. In other words; "bricked."

I sincerely hope that is not the case with your CF cards... Try the re-formatting method first and good luck!

Best,

- Jordan

 

[Mick van Rossum NSC]

Some people have reported this problem for more than a year now. Very hard to find the cause, my cards appeared to have microscopic damage to the tiny contacts. I sent them in for evaluation and the wonderful tech support sent me back some pics of it. Pity I had to buy new ones.... One of the problems with CF cards in general is that they have small and vulnerable contactpoints (sorry, don't know the right word in english) and the high numbers of mounting and unmounting the card physically; Out of 16 cards 5 pieces were dead after about 8 months and about 950 card swaps. One of the reasons to go with SSD instead of CF; they last longer.
Sometimes reformatting helps; just in disk utility is fine, most of the time rebooting the camera will also mount the card, but of course that is not ideal. In the end replacing the cards was the only real option.

Hope that helps

 

[Brent Carter]

From another post of mine:



To be frank, there are usually five possible scenarios when something like this happens:

1. Damaged/Cheap/Non-UDMA external reader/writer - Can not only corrupt footage, but can also damage the CF card itself.
2. Bad firewire cable used for offload - Can cause corrupt footage.
3. RED ONE CF Module's reader/writer - Can not only corrupt footage, but can also damage the CF card itself. This is usually the result of a bent pin on the reader/writer.
4. Bad CF card - Damage to a CF card is usually caused by #1 or #3 above. A truly independently bad CF card is extremely unlikely given our historical QC rate analysis on them. I am talking really, really small percentage.
5. First gen 16 GB CF - Needs firmware updating.

BC