Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Dead Red Raid FW800 - common?

C

ChristopherKenworthy

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 26, 2007
Messages
277
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Website
www.christopherkenworthy.com
We've got three Red Drives (RAID) on set. One of the rental units arrived with a dead FW800 port. A day later, our own Red Drive lost its FW800 port. The FW400 still works, but what if the FW400 fails as well? I'd hate to get a great set of takes stuck in a Red Drive. We thought it might be cables, or bus power, but tests showed it is, without a doubt, the FW800 ports.

The drives have been on tripods/dolly/jib; but no sudden movement. Is this a common problem, or have we been unlucky? We resorted to CFs to get through, but that was tough, as some of the takes are over 4.5 minutes long.
 
While FireWire has always been advertised as hot-pluggable, I've seen dead ports on camcorders recently and Sony started warning about hot-plugging in their manuals…

So better play it safe.

Regards,

Uli
 
I have dead FW400 port on my Sony HVR. Seems quite common I heard.
The camera is in warranty repair since chrismas.

Can´t help comparing that to the RED warranty service.....that seems to be standing at the Red factory door waiting for the FedEx truck with their tools raised....

Jochen
 
I have gone threw 3 Sonys going bad on the Firewire port myself.
And I have seen 4 others go bad in my experience that did not belong to me.

I have seen multiple hard drives go bad on the firewire port also.

hope that helps.
 
ludmux said:
Did you tried it with the power supply connected to the drive?
Click to expand...

Multiple tests, with many cables and the spare power supplies. These were all ruled out as the cause, as the one unaffected drive worked fine with all the other cables and power supplies.
 
Have two drives and one just lost it's firewire 800. Tried everything like you and ruled out other possibilities.
 
Hmmm... on firewire 400 the basic rule is never plug it in with anything powered on either side because ports blow so often. Maybe that rule needs to extend to firewire 800. PIA.

On FW400 you can buy a port isolator cable that removes power. Or go 6pin to 4pin.
 
Has anyone else come across a dead FW 800 port on RED DRIVE or was it just one off incident with Christopher.
 
appears to be blown 800 and 400 ports on one of mine too. anybody else? any fixes here? has something happened since april with these??

in other words, is there something i might possible be doing wrong that i can fix so this unit will function properly while i'm on the road (ie. africa now)

thanks,
p
 
One of ours has lost its FW800 port too. unfortunately, with RedDrives on backorder as it is and no spares to take up the slack, we're making do by using FW400 or USB connections. Thankfully the drives have multiple ways of connecting :)

Probably once we get enough spares and the backorders have caught up with production we'll send ours back for a fix, before warranty runs out.

HTH

Paul
 
I had a FW800 go on a drive a few weeks back which Red replaced under warranty quickly. Having discussed the issue with another Red Owner, we found that we'd both had this problem and in both our cases it had been whilst they were daisy-chained to G-Tech drives.
 
thanks for feedback--I was just keen (hoping actually) to see if there might be anything going on that I was doing wrong so that I could just do it differently and problem would be solved.

re: daisy chaining; mine has never been daisy chained--just back and forth between camera and laptop. re: multiple inputs: who knew I would appreciate USB so much?!! I haven't spoken to RED yet (I don't think there'd be a good way to get me a replacement in the near future and I can still use the USB), but I'm sure their service will be superb--they're incredible.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top