My 1st SDHC Nightmare

C

caiofilm

Member
So after filming with my wonderful HMC150 for the past couple of years now, I've encountered my first card failure: Kingston 32 GB SDHC Class 6 card bought at Fry's Norcal. My camera's firmware is 1.21. It was the 1st half of my shoot and cards that I've used after that one failed (Delkin 16 GB Class 6, OCZ 8GB Class 6) have worked out fine and I've transferred them over to my computer and log & transfered into final cut. The Kingston won't even mount on the computer.

Questions:

1) Are there any known issues with 32 GB cards or Kingston cards? It's ironic that my generic brand cards haven't ever failed me for 2 years, and the name brand one has after its second use.

2) Are there any limitations on how long a scene can be recorded? I was on a hike documenting a mushroom foraging field trip for a school and some takes might have been long.

3) Am I pretty much screwed if the card won't even mount on the computer?

4) What brands are people using?

thanks for any insight :(:crybaby::crybaby::crybaby::(
 
Are you saying that your computer won't recognize your card? If so, shut down your computer, and unplug the power supply. Let it refresh for about 30 seconds, then reattach it, and power it back on. This problem occurs with my 32g Kingston card too, but clears up after doing these few steps. Hopefully this works!
 
I think I'm unfortunately screwed. All of my other cards mount fine as "No Name" and I've already log & transferred the other cards into Final Cut. The card doesn't even mount on the computer (I've tried your suggestion of restarting the computer), so I can't even use the AVCCAM recovery software. When I put the card in the camera I get the "Check Card" error message and the card status tells me it's incompatible. I've also tried mounting it to a PC laptop with no luck.

So I'm coming to terms with this loss, I'm extremely lucky this wasn't a paid gig, it was more of a personal project, but I still suffered losing unrecoverable and irreplaceable footage. So my questions are if there are any weird issues with 32 GB cards? My other cards are 8 & 16 GB cards and I've never had this problem before, even with hour long interviews. It's weird because I used it once before, but most of the takes were like 3-4 minutes, not hour long hikes.

So any insight into using these larger 32 GB cards would be welcome. Should I just stay away from them and stick to 8 & 16 GB'ers? Thanks for any insights.
 
Cards die...it doesn't have anything to do with the fact it's a 32GB. I have a Patriot 32GB and it works fine, but some people have had bad experiences with brand XXXXX...

The general consensus is that Sandisk is the best..no one ever complains about Sandisk.
 
Can you play the footage back in cam? Are you using a card reader or the cam to upload? Try a different reader and or cable, and or different usb port. You might also try carefully swabbing the card contacts with a Q-Tip lightly dipped in alchohol. Good luck....card failure is a bummer.

Grant
 
Hi Grant, unfortunately, the card is unreadable in the camera, even though it was properly formatted prior to shooting and seemed to be operating fine while shooting. I shut off the camera for the lunch break and when I turned it back on after lunch is when the card read error messages started popping up. So I changed cards to get on with the shoot, but didn't know the card was that screwed. All of the other cards used before that one and after that one worked out fine. I will try out your Q-Tip trick, I would be stoked if that worked. I've already tried different readers, different cables, different USB ports, hell different computers both Mac & PC laptops with the SD card slot built in. Thanks for responding.
 
To JT_Productions: when you say I could format the card, are you saying I should format it so that it's readable and then try to use the AVCCAM recovery software? Wouldn't formatting erase everything that's on the card? The reason I ask that is because I notice that formatting a full card takes longer than say a half-full card. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?
 
Yes, formatting the card does erase everything on it, yet allows it to be read by FC. I have a Mac & PC and if I'm primarily using my card with my PC, and I decide to log & transfer on my Mac, the card does not show up. Yet, after formatting the card and then connecting it to my Mac it's readable.
 
Personally, I would contact the manufacturer to see if they have a data recovery team. I lost the majority of an almost full 16GB (red stripe) Transcend card (I also lost a lot of money because of that). Next time it happened though (on a replacement card), they practically recovered everything.

Since then I've only used small 4GB Green stripe Transcends or 4 & 8GB Sandisks. No further problems.

I'm not going back to 16GB cards and I wouldn't ever risk 32GB.
 
Hi JT_Productions, sorry if I'm over-analyzing your statement, do you mean if I format the card, it will still be read by Final Cut with all of the footage that I thought I lost? I'm praying that there's still some way to recover the footage. I didn't want to format the card yet, because I was hoping there was still a way to recover the footage instead of permanently sealing the coffin.
 
There are some PC based data recovery software options out there (if the card itself is OK). Most free. Does the cam say "check card" when the sd card is in the cam? if so, likely a dead microcontroller in the sd card. Most manufacturers will recover data off of it for you and send you the data on a new card for free.

I only use ATP Promax cards or Sandisk Extremes now. Bullet proof.
 
caiofilm said:
Hi JT_Productions, sorry if I'm over-analyzing your statement, do you mean if I format the card, it will still be read by Final Cut with all of the footage that I thought I lost? I'm praying that there's still some way to recover the footage. I didn't want to format the card yet, because I was hoping there was still a way to recover the footage instead of permanently sealing the coffin.
Click to expand...

No, the footage will all be erased. Unfortunately, I don't know of any other PC or Mac based recovery software.
 
I would contact Kingston to see if they will try to recover the video. Kingston recently had a rash of bad class 6 cards, but yours is the first report of a 32gb failure. I've shot hundreds of kingston cards and had a failure in november and now I won't use them. Oddly enough no reports of class 4 kingston failures. I now do test recordings and fill cards up before I use them on a shoot. I use panasonic gold or fuji high performance cards and nothing larger than 8gb's.
 
caiofilm said:
Questions:

1) Are there any known issues with 32 GB cards or Kingston cards? It's ironic that my generic brand cards haven't ever failed me for 2 years, and the name brand one has after its second use.

2) Are there any limitations on how long a scene can be recorded? I was on a hike documenting a mushroom foraging field trip for a school and some takes might have been long.

3) Am I pretty much screwed if the card won't even mount on the computer?

4) What brands are people using?

thanks for any insight :(:crybaby::crybaby::crybaby::(
Click to expand...

2) No, I have filmed shows during more than 2 hours. This is a long continuous clip!

4) I have several Panasonic Gold 16 GB, one Panasonic Gold Class 10 32 GB and one Sandisk Extreme Class 10 32 GB. No issues here.
 
I too just recently lost a 32GB Kingston (Class 10) card. Symptoms were while shooting (in my HMC-150) I paused recording, recomposed the shot, and when I went to start filming again got "CHECK CARD". After that no amount of effort putting it into various card readers or the camera yields anything; essentially the card is a brick - entirely unrecognized by any system I plug it into. And by 'unrecognized' I mean the system doesn't even acknowledge anything's inserted, so no formatting/data recovery/etc. for me.

2 hours of footage lost.
 
Thanks WolfTrouble

Thanks WolfTrouble

You're right, that's exactly what happened to me, no sympathy from their customer service (Kingston's) besides a form letter with an RMA #. So now they're going to send me a replacement card that I wouldn't trust if it were the last one on earth. Thanks for screwing me Kingston.
 
ARG I just bought a bunch of Class 10 32GB (I think they are Kingston-- labled as Micro Center) for my HMC80. After reading this thread I hope I didn't make a mistake. Fortunately I simultaneously record to my firestore and only rely on the SDHC card(s) if I would have a problem with my firestore files.
 
If nothing else works...format the card...it then should be readable by your computer. You can then use recovery software to hopfully restore the formated data. After formatting DO NOT write anythign else to the card since this reduces the chances of recovery. i've used this software http://www.piriform.com/recuva successfully with sd cards.
 
Richter Video Equipment said:
If nothing else works...format the card...it then should be readable by your computer. You can then use recovery software to hopfully restore the formated data. After formatting DO NOT write anythign else to the card since this reduces the chances of recovery. i've used this software http://www.piriform.com/recuva successfully with sd cards.
Click to expand...

The problem was the card's controller chip fried, and it wasn't recognized by the camera, computer, or anything. Kingston's since sent me a new replacement card, I've asked them to try to salvage the info, but was told S.O.L. I haven't opened the package yet and almost just want to sell it on Craigslist because I don't trust them at all. Has anyone else experienced problems with Kingston? Or was I the one to experience a freak accident, isolated incident?
 
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