E-W 960GB Mini-Mag + 3.1 USB-C reader crashes

[Sean Montgomery]

Hello all,

I'm trying to diagnose a problem that is thoroughly confusing me. I received a brand new 960GB MINI-MAG card less than a month ago. It seems to record media just fine, but I'm having major issues offloading said footage to a disk drive. I use the super tiny new 3.1 USB-C reader.

What happens: Upon dragging the media folders from the card to my internal hard drive, the media starts transferring quite fast. It starts out at around 370 MB/s, but after about 10 seconds, it plummets to around 100 MB/s. On a few occasions, it has slowly crept along at this speed until completion. But on most occasions, the reader/card will simply crash altogether and dismount from the computer with an error.

I borrowed a friend's mini-mag reader, which is not the new 3.1 version. I tested this process with the same 960GB card. Same results. I assumed that suggested a faulty card, and I proceeded with sending it back to RED for evaluation. RED performed "extensive testing" on both my card and reader and reported no issues whatsoever. On their end, both units performed up to factory speed/expectations, and it was shipped back to me.

This morning, I installed the newest Epic-W camera firmware and began an offloading test again. Same crash result -- 3 times in a row. I even recorded a video using my cell phone of what happens. This sample clip has just been forwarded to RED support for review, and I'm awaiting their thoughts.

https://vimeo.com/204211827/f113adb81a

I'm just really at a loss here as to what the issue is. Figured tossing it out to the collective brains here was worth a shot. Would love some suggestions on what may be causing this.

 

[Todd T]

It's not just you; others have had issues with Windows "Write Cache" and "Write-cache Buffer Flushing".

If you want to do a test you can look at what this person did to see how those settings affect your transfer speeds.

Be sure to make note of your current settings, and that you fully understand the warnings in the dialog box.

As they say: "Your milage may vary; proceed at your own risk."

 

[Sean Montgomery]

Interesting. I haven't had this issue arise with previous gigs for which we shot on mini-mags. I shot a music video in December with this Epic-W on a 128GB mini-mag and 256GB mini mag. Both of those cards transferred flawlessly.

I just tried copying my two test footage folders over to my SSD, the one I've typically reserved for Windows and Adobe apps. All previous crash attempts were copying to either an internal WD Black 5TB drive or a portable external drive.

The result copying to the SSD: Write speeds maintained 370 MB/s for a much longer period of time. It did eventually crash near the end, but it kept that speed for about 30 seconds as opposed to 10. Not sure if that information helps at all. But I plan to review this thread and see if I can glean any knowledge from it.

 

[Homer Dulu]

Sean, might even be your computer. Does it transfer fine on somebody else's PC (with both the USB 3.1 and non-USB 3.1) reader?

 

[Sean Montgomery]

I have two Windows based systems (both Win10) -- one in my production studio and one at home. The crashing with 3.1 reader/960GB card happens on both systems. It's difficult for me to do extensive testing with the non-3.1 reader since I don't own it and need to borrow it from a friend.

 

[Homer Dulu]

Oooh yikes. That doesn't help...

 

[David Schuurman]

Not to change the subject but I just sent my reader back under warranty because it wasn't mounting my cards reliably for months. Like in your case they performed "extensive testing" and said nothings wrong with it (therefore charging me the cost of a new reader). Leaves such a sour taste in my mouth. I hope you get a resolution to your issue.

 

[Shawn P]

Sean: Do you have the 3.0 mini mag card reader? Do you think you can try the same transfer with that card reader and perhaps share the results?