C300: Had a 128gb Sandisk CFAST 2.0 card go down. Are they still the most reliable cards?

L

Lkorver

Well-known member
If not, what other cards should I consider? Looking at the 128's on B&H, sounds like lots of people (small sample size) are having issues with these cards.

I've shot hundreds of hours on my C300mkii, and this week was the first time I've had a card go down (I have four Sandisk 128gb). I shot a full card, played some of it back in "VCR" mode to show the producer, looked great. Handed off to the DIT, and he said the card crapped out on him when he booted up. Now it only shows 20GB of data and a bunch of ghost mxf files that are only 137kb in size. I lost the most important footage from the shoot. The card is currently at a data recovery shop, but they are saying only 50/50 chance of getting anything back. The card is 2.5 years old, the "B" series. Going to get four new 128's, and use the remaining cards I own to record in the backup slot.
 
We have a lot of them in our rental shop and although I've never had one out and out fail, I have had a good number of them show pre-failure warnings in DriveDX. Sandisk has usually been good to replace those cards under warranty as DITs will reject the cards if they show that failure.

I'm curious - which version of the cards are you using? Are they the newest ones with the slate logo with '130' written on it (indicating the VPG-130 certification of the card)? I have not had to replace any of those but the older cards that had the Canon / ARRI compatible firmware seem to show that error in DriveDX quite a bit.
 
Sandisk cards can be weird sometimes.

In late 2014/2015, they were taken off of Blackmagic's approved card list because of increased failure rates.

Then BM updated them/released new ones and they went back on months later. The VPG-130 note is worth considering.

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It's also recommended to not use the same cards with the C300 Mark II and ARRI cameras as they supposedly get corrupted.

Sandisk and Lexar (used to) also make CFast cards specifically for ARRI cameras.
 
NorBro said:
It's also recommended to not use the same cards with the C300 Mark II and ARRI cameras as they supposedly get corrupted.
Click to expand...

FWIW, we have had the same cards used on both C300 MK II and ARRI Alexa Mini cameras and I have never experienced this issue.

For reference, we probably have 40-50 CFast cards total (mostly Sandisk 128GB with a few of the newer 256GB and then a few 256GB Lexars) and with the exception of two Lexars having issues mounting in an Alexa Mini, I haven't had a card out and out fail on one of our clients. As I mentioned above, the Sandisks will show that pre-failure warning in DriveDX but even then, they are still usable.
 
There was more talk about this 2-3 years ago before any firmware updates/fixes...I've never had a problem with any media in any camera in my life (knock on wood).

[Although any risk would probably increase if I shot more (hours/days per year).]
 
You might want to make sure it wasn't the card reader that caused the problem. There is a thread on here about issues with a Lexar reader. In fact, I had at least one card get corrupted by improperly being loaded onto a Lexar reader.
 
Been using the Ego Disk 256GB cards with the C200 for almost a year without a single problem or hiccup. I've also used them a few times on the C300 MKII, no problems there either.
 
I had endless trouble reading my months-old CFAST cards in the Lexar reader. I have a 256GB Delkin and a 240GB Angelbird, and they frequently wouldn't mount on any of my machines (current Macs or PCs). Pretty sure it lunched one of the cards at some point too (was late last year).

Bought a Sandisk reader, seems to be much better.
 
I'm using the cheap Sandisk USB 3.0 reader, flawless so far. I had the Lexar T-Bolt reader, after all of the reports, I got paranoid and got rid of it.
 
Dustin Svehlak said:
I'm curious - which version of the cards are you using? Are they the newest ones with the slate logo with '130' written on it (indicating the VPG-130 certification of the card)? I have not had to replace any of those but the older cards that had the Canon / ARRI compatible firmware seem to show that error in DriveDX quite a bit.
Click to expand...

Not the newer cards with the 130 on the front. I bought these in 2015 I think
 
Lkorver said:
Not the newer cards with the 130 on the front. I bought these in 2015 I think
Click to expand...

I've replaced a good amount of those 2015 cards via RMA with Sandisk due to them showing a pre-failure in DriveDX. I think they had fairly unstable firmware but also, the VPG-130 certified Sandisk cards haven't been on the market long enough to show the same issues so time will tell!
 
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