Problem with RED Drive 320 gb

[Brennan Robideaux]

Recently, I was on a shoot with my BT R1MX and my drive would not read. I'm not sure what the problem was so I tried to fix it and when it didn't work still, I shot with a DSLR for the night. So, now I am trying to work on it again and it is saying that the media is too slow. Not sure why it says this because I have shot at 4.5k on Redcode 42 with no problem before. I try to format and it just stays formatting for hours. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Nick Grow]

Brennan, I recommend contacting RED SUPPORT directly by sending us a tech support ticket here http://www.red.com/contact_us and a camera log file so we can assist you.

NICK

 

[Brennan Robideaux]

Will do but in case anyone knows a quick solution. Now when I format it, it just stays formatting for hours. Any thoughts?

 

[Jett He]

The red drives are in a raid setup. So ideally they both have to operate identically or you will get errors. it might be that one of the hard drive is failing or even the raid controller.

 

[Edward Johnson]

BUMP

 

[Brennan Robideaux]

I took the drive apart and replaced the two 5400 RPM drives with new drives of the same RPM but instead of the Red saying that the disk is unformatted, it said that there was no Digmag. Does Red put some type of code in the their drives so that the camera can only read those?

 

[Freya]

Yes the red drives have custom firmware apparently.
I would suggest you don't replace the two drives.
Can't be more explicit than that but...

Are the new drives the same make and model as old ones?

 

[Brennan Robideaux]

No different brands. I didn't think that RED would be able to have custom firmware. Do you have any idea why the drive would stay formatting for hours and hours? The computer can read it but the camera can't.

 

[Freya]

Do you have any idea why the drive would stay formatting for hours and hours? The computer can read it but the camera can't.

It sounds like one of your drives might be failing. Bad sectors can cause a drive to take forever to format as it attempts to map out the bad sectors.
If you have a little sata case you can probably run tests on each drive to see if I'm right. Usually SMART will tell you if the drive is failing or if you are in the danger zone in terms of bad sectors etc.

 

[Freya]

No different brands. I didn't think that RED would be able to have custom firmware.

Yes apparently the red drives use custom firmware, and your experience would seem to confirm this.
Nobody knows much about this as you have to sign an agreement not to reverse engineer or repair stuff with RED when you get yr camera.

For the record, different brands wouldn't be good because in a raid setup the two drives are supposed to be identical. Just sayin...
.
Also note... Nick Grow from RED has offered to help earlier in this thread... you could have a chat...

This is the big problem with the red drives, is they are starting to get old now for spinning media...