Two 16GB CF Cards Went Bad Today?!

[Michael Hastings]

What is the technical advantage of all the pins on cf vs sd cards which seem much more difficult to damage?

 

[Jordan Livingston]

As much as I am loathe to re-open a "COMPLAINT DEPT" thread, I wanted to provide an update to everyone here.

As I requested above, a few people reporting issues did send me their cards in for eval. And we (RED) engaged the services of a media firm that specializes in failed CF card failure analysis. Every one of the "dead" cards I received has the same issue.

Earlier in this thread, I had posted:



#4 above was the lucky number. Every "dead" card had physical damage to the slots of the CF cards where the pins engage (see attached image from one of the cards). What happens is when pins or guide rails on a reader / writer are not perfecting aligned, the pins of the reader/writer hit the slots indirectly on the card. And when they do go in the slot, the pins hit the pins on the inside of the card itself. Eventually, they push the pins inside the card up or to the side (like you see in the image). Thus, over time, you lose connectivity. Yet, the card is not "dead". We had the media firm put on a new set of connector slots onto the a "dead" CF card. Voila, worked like a charm - actual media is fine.

So, some other thoughts:
* Use a magnifying glass and look at the connectors of your cards. See if you can see damage being induced.
* If you can, try to isolate the reader/writer causing the damage. To the naked eye, the pins may looked aligned, but they only have to be off by just a hair. Also, check the guide rails of the reader to make sure they allow you to cleanly insert the card.
* Not only can this damage cause a card to appear dead, but it can also cause an intermittent connection between card and reader/writer - which causes corrupt data, etc.

We also ran tests here with M-X sensor and Build 30.5.0 of RED ONE firmware. We could not find any evidence of these causing issues with media data.

I hope this helps clear up the reported issues in this thread.
BC

This does help, Brent. Thanks very much. After speaking again with the owner of the cards, my understanding is that he intends to take you up on your generous offer to analyze them and deduce the cause of their failure. As for pin damaged, I have personally looked at them as closely as I can (I have fantastic eyesight) without having a magnifying glass on set, and I couldn't see anything visually wrong with any of the connectors. That being said, indeed perhaps a magnifying glass would reveal otherwise...

In any case, I'm STILL unclear about the issue of firmware on the 16GB cards. Since I don't own any 16GB cards myself, it seems like I'm at the mercy of the rental houses and owner / operators to have hopefully updated their firmware. If I'm going out into the fields with CF cards that are essentially ticking time bombs waiting to fail, I'd at least like to know that! Is there any way to determine wether a CF card has received the necessary firmware update or not?

- Jordan

 

[Sam Taylor]

What is the technical advantage of all the pins on cf vs sd cards which seem much more difficult to damage?

This was my immediate thought on reading this thread as well. I have had reading issues (on Sandisk cards, NOT red cards), even with expensive card readers. I now keep a close ongoing check on the pins in card readers, to see if they have become loose, or out of alignment.

 

[Brent Carter]

In any case, I'm STILL unclear about the issue of firmware on the 16GB cards. Since I don't own any 16GB cards myself, it seems like I'm at the mercy of the rental houses and owner / operators to have hopefully updated their firmware. If I'm going out into the fields with CF cards that are essentially ticking time bombs waiting to fail, I'd at least like to know that! Is there any way to determine wether a CF card has received the necessary firmware update or not?

I never said they were a ticking time bomb, no. As I stated earlier, the update provided better performance and stability. I never said it caused cards to die. What I did say is that if you have issues with a card, that could be one of the factors, period. Without individual cards in my hand, I can only address known historical factors - not what is wrong with a specific card.

Every card that was sent back to us and we updated the firmware on, we placed a silver dot on the side to note it was complete. We continued with the silver dot for awhile so people did not get new cards and did not think they were updated. Since that free update program was so long ago, we stopped the dot...

 

[Michael Hastings]

What is the technical advantage of all the pins on cf vs sd cards which seem much more difficult to damage?

This was my immediate thought on reading this thread as well. I have had reading issues (on Sandisk cards, NOT red cards), even with expensive card readers. I now keep a close ongoing check on the pins in card readers, to see if they have become loose, or out of alignment.

Brent?

 

[Brent Carter]

Haha, great question - have never really thought about why they do pins in the first place compared to SD-type connection.

BC

 

[sander kamp]

So can the cards be repaired? Or should we just be count on that cards last a year or so and then need to be replaced?

Still strange this only happens to 16GB cards and not to 8Gb cards.

 

[Deanan]

So can the cards be repaired? Or should we just be count on that cards last a year or so and then need to be replaced?

Still strange this only happens to 16GB cards and not to 8Gb cards.

That's not true. 16GB cards statistically are doing much better than the 8GB cards and better than card manufacturers generally see.

Looking at the failure analysis reports for the last couple of cards that went bad and they all had damaged pins.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Weird thing, coming to the 16GB cards from RED, I have had much more luck with cheap - nobrand USB cardreaders, than with expensive brand firewire readers.

This seems counterintuitive on all levels, but still is the case...

I haven't encountered problems with the cards, though - just getting the data properly off them.

 

[Erich Ocean]

There are file systems RED could use that ensure end-to-end correctness of data. ZFS is one of them (and is also free). If ZFS were used, you could do an MD5 checksum after recording was done (aka offline) and be sure the data written/read was expected. After transfer to the mac or PC, you could then re-compute the checksum and make sure it arrived safely.

In the end, you'd also want ZFS (or something similar) on the Mac or PC to make sure nothing changed there as well.