Carefull with those CF cards!

P

Petrus

Well-known member
Day's shoot with a crew of 8 and 4 talents. Full 16 GB card placed in the plastic box thingy provided and into a laptop bag pocket.

Something pressed the card so hard (unused backup HDD, of all things?) that it became dented, there is a mark on the box cover also.

Mac can not read the card, PC does not even notice it is there. Data salvage company is now taking the card apart to see if anything can be done.

Lesson learned: Transfer and backup right after the shoot, right there. Or get a crushproof box for the cards. One lonely $30 card might be actually worth $10000 or more.
 
A small pelican case is $15. You could run a truck over it, and it's waterproof. It'll hold a dozen CF cards.

Don't take these risks.
 
When I was in sales, we had the ABC's (Always Be Closing).

In production, I've learned to have a new set of ABC's = Always Be Copying. I always have my laptop on hand to back up my cards after a shoot. And I never delete the info off of the card until I've backed up my laptop to an external hard drive. That way I've always got the primary copy and a back up.
 
Data recovery company took tha card apart and was able to read the memory banks directly: controller chip was broken. The operation cost about $1000.

Getting Pelican 0940 boxes...

And yes, I never format the cards before the material is on 2 separate hard disks, and checked.
 
Petrus said:
Getting Pelican 0940 boxes...
Click to expand...

I have a 1010 and a 1020, and wouldn't trade either. Both Mil-Spec, dustproof, crush-proof I've had my cell phone fall into the pool inside one of them without issue.

I'm an overkill kind of guy though.
 
hmm, is your camera case you had them in not padded?

I keep my spare cards in the plastic thingy inside the burton, but all the compartments are padded, seems like it would be tough to do this.

Good tips though. I think an altoids container would also be a much cheaper just as effective soltuion if you dont feel like pony'ing up Pelican money.
 
I don't know, I keep mine in a little flat pouch inside a soft camera case that I try real hard not to run over with my car :cheesy:

.
 
I dropped one of mine in the rain and it got wet. Once it dried it worked fine.

I thought you could run over these things with your car and drop them in water and still they'd still work.
 
This is why a DIT, while expensive is essential. He makes sure all the footage is offloaded promptly, backed up, and safe. PLUS you dont have to wait 2 hours at the end of a shoot waiting for all your media to off load...
 
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