P2 card Format Err - catastrophe

D

DIGIMARK

Member
Have been searching P2 threads and have found similar issues but nothing yet exactly the same. As there are so many users of this format I can't imagine this situation is unique.
Have a 64GB card that when put in to the camera reads "FORMAT ERR". There is about an hour plus footage on the card (720/30PN) that I fear is lost and have sent to Panasonic to see what can be recovered as it's a client project that can not be replicated, hence the magic of a live event.
Back story to this... shooting a live conference event on HPX-170, all day event, camera is running off power supply. (shortcoming to this series of cameras is that power supply attaches to battery port, no failsafe battery back-up). Event is wrapping up and venue technician starts pulling A/C plugs from wall in rush to get out quicker. Power to camera is cut before record is stopped. This is what I believe caused the "corruption" to card. Get power back to camera instantly the flashing "FORMAT ERR" pops up. Camera & Card will not go-to/get-to point where clip repair can be done in browser, have tried in the HPX-170, HPX-2000, and on mac dektop & laptop (card will not mount at all via AJ-PCD2 usb reader). Error on format level seems to nullify all else.

Now stuck with a client that of course wants footage they hired us to capture, a card that is unreadable, and Panasonic that charges $390 for data recovery on something that seems to me to be a system failure of "flawless" technology. A power failure should not wipe out an entire card.

Rather frustrating. Any input, advise, tale of similar situation much appreciated.
 
Always run a UPS for gigs like this. It only needs too keep up for a few minutes to avoid the scenario you mentioned.
 
ceejay7777 said:
Always run a UPS for gigs like this. It only needs too keep up for a few minutes to avoid the scenario you mentioned.
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I think he knows now...

I would hope the big boys on this forum will step up and offer some advice at this point.
This seems to be a deep and dark place any P2 user could fall into.
 
Can you get to a PC with a P2 reader? I'm not familiar with Mac, but on windoze, there are several date recovery routines available if you could treat the card like a drive. I've never had a P2 card fail, but I have recovered data from other camera cards in similar situations. My guess is that a missing "Last Clip" file is at least partially to blame here. I'm not at my office right now, and can't remember the names of the software routines I use, but I'm guessing that any low-level reader should work.
 
Nightmare continues.

Unfortunate news. Just received word back from Panasonic technician... completely un-salvagable. Kicker is that panasonic technician making incredible assertions that card must have be reformatted twice or that there was nothing on the card. How do you re-formatt a card that instantly reads "format err" on 2 cameras and won't mont on 2 separate computers via Panasonic AJ-PCD2 reader? First conversation they told me there were 5 clips of 18-40 seconds each, after which I told them that was the wrong card as my clips would be in the 20-40 minute range. Response - "oh yes this is not your card, yours is a 64GB". So the new claim is that card got there, put in machine, read no errors at all and was completely blank. They have a 90% data recovery rate according to technicians claim... clearly this is in the dark unmentionable (obviously operator error) 10% of format error purgatory. Complete loss of confidence in this system.

A true P2 nightmare which is now costing me $140 (instead of $390 data recovery) for the reformatting of a card that they say had no errors & no data on it. Always find it delightful to be charged for failed technology. I was a very early adopter of P2HD owning a HVX-200 early on then subsequently a full size HPX-2000 & HPX170. There have been a few data hiccups along the way but this was the first truly catastrophic that is entirely technology based.

Awesome... can't wait for the conversation with client.

Will definitely swing future jobs of this nature towards my Sony SxS cameras as that in camera clip repair system (recently tested with cutting power scenario) actually works and will not cost me precious time and client confidence.
 
Man, that was bad news. I too bought into P2 due to advertised reliability. I have never had an error but I don't shoot as often these days.
 
Appreciate the input. Used to have a majority of P2HD clients but past year and a half has become much less as many clients don't need the enormous data flow, preferring the slimmer 35mb @1080. Has appreciably cut down on my offloading to drives post shoot as I can use transfer devices in the field that are more advanced then archaic & slow USB-2.0.
With this uncomfortable experience will start to sway clients over to other systems as I have SxS cameras as well as a NanoFlash external recorder.
Of course battery powering the 170 from now on when it does get used because at least I have half a chance for survival with an indicator warning light. Its always a poor system design from day 1 to have the power supply connect to the battery input and not a separate one as on many Sony models in the solid state line-up.
Camera & technology was a workhorse for many shoots... think I am moving on where possible.
:Drogar-BlackEye(DBG
 
Hello,

If you have a P2 reader on your Mac, and the P2 card shows up in the Finder as a disk, then you can try DeepMediaScan with Treasured.

http://aeroquartet.com/movierepair/download.html

Open Treasured and do Disk > Open damaged disk... then select your P2 in left column of the dialog. Then cross fingers and launch the scan.

-- Benoît
 
Man, this is the second time I've ever heard of anyone losing data using P2 media from any reason, sorry for the loss. I've done torture tests before, pulling the card out, letting the power run out and pulling the battery off while recording, and the worst that happened was the clip I was recording got corrupted, but never the whole card.
 
In eight years of using the system, that has been my experience as well -- I've torture-tested it, yanked cards out during recording, yanked the power out during recording, stomped on the cards, static-shocked them, dunked 'em in water, and I've never heard of any card ever going bad under any scenario. I've heard of a card being DOA when first used, but I've never heard of a card that has been working, suddenly not working.
 
Also, flash media does technically become less reliable over time as it's used, as the data registers wear with every write cycle, but in practice the lifespan of E-series P2 media is 2000 write cycles - this means you'd have to record a total of 2,340 hours of AVC-I 100 before you're past the warranty.

So even if you fill the card up once every day, you get about 5.5 years worth of days, under more normal circumstances you can expect about 10x as much; unless you shoot news every day.


P.S. Formatting and erasing data has no bearing on longevity, all operations that have to do with memory deletion on any flash device simply "mark" the data as being absent, which is why data can be recovered even after a format.
 
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To troubleshoot this properly one would have to know your general workflow. Such as how you usually format your cards..etc.

I once had the exact same thing happen to me. Put the card back in the camera and did a repair clip. It worked but still had to do some data reco.
 
Cards are always formatted in camera. Was a 64GB card, approximately 2 years old, used no where near daily, more like bi-weekly. We spread the data joy over a multitude of cards & formats. Was never able to get to clip repair or thumbnail as the "Format err" wouldn't allow any access to the card what so ever.


Barry,
Do appreciate the response. In the 5+ years of using P2 I have never experienced a "format err", in 35+ years of walking around the streets of NYC I've also never been hit by a bus. Neither of those statements means that either can't happen. Situation mentioned above is what it is, the facts, just the facts. The card was returned from Panasonic who determined it was error free void of any data (despite having been used for 45min to 1hr pre-failure) and certified in perfect working condition after formatting. If you have some insight as to why it would read "format err" and negate all the previously recorded material that would be helpful. I do appreciate that you are one of the foremost knowledgeable people on all things P2... but this happened. Can't conceive of a scenario in which it would be beneficial to me to make this situation up and work through the client issues it created, serves absolutely no purpose for me. Working through this though there do seem to be more card issues out there then are on the discussion groups, the technician stated he had about a half dozen cards currently on his desk going through the recovery process & they have a 90% data recovery rate. If cards never have "issues" his desk would be much more empty. Alas I am amoung the 10%.
 
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If cards never have "issues"
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The cards don't have issues. People have issues. User error causes issues. People format cards occasionally, and they send them in to Panasonic to be recovered. We've had multiple reports of this. That doesn't constitute a failure of the system, that means that people have formatted cards before. People format cards before they've offloaded them, and then they panic, send them in to Panasonic, and apparently 90% of the time they're able to recover the data on the card.

Your situation was above and beyond that. You had a scenario where the power was pulled while the card was actively being recorded. Now, I've done that test several times and it never caused a problem, but if there ever was a scenario that might cause a problem, that seems to be a more likely scenario. I've also ejected cards during writing and the worst that has happened is that the last clip needs to be "repaired" with the in-camera repair capability, and you lose a second or two of the end of the recording, but that's it. And both of those actions would be classified as user error, certainly.

What I'm saying is -- your situation happened, just like people have indeed been hit by buses, but all I was saying was that as the owner and most prolific poster of the forum that is home to more P2 users than anywhere, and with hundreds of thousands of P2 cameras in use, and eight years of history here, I've never heard of a card becoming damaged before. Your case is indeed the first and, so far as I know of, only case of a card failing and someone losing data. I don't know how you're reading that I'm implying that you're making it up, I certainly didn't imply any such thing. As for recovering the data, you've done what can be done -- you sent it in to the Panasonic service center. If they can't get the data back, I can't figure out what else you could do... sorry this happened...
 
I have quite a few E-series 64 Gb P2 cards and never have format read error. The FORMAT NG error did occur only when I use Shot Put Pro 4.1.4 on Mac and have it automatically reformat and eject. They're still working on this bug as the code is written for 4-32 Gb P2 cards. This bug can be created over and over again. But a P2 camera causing FORMAT NG it is a rarity.

Recorded them on 2/3" and 1/3" cams. The P2 format has a safety mechanism that every 5 min, it will go to the next sequence of #. What I noticed is for example: 0001DX.mxf will advance to 0004YB.mxf if you record more than 20 min. In theory, the first 15 min should be recoverable and readable if power shuts off abruptly or removing the P2 card while recording. For added peace of mind, I usually stop and start whenever there's a long break. This is just a way to ensure that if any power glitch, the last recorded file is 100% good. Overall P2 is pretty robust. This is a rare and hard to re-create incident.
 
I have an 8GB A-series card that went bad. Started becoming unreliable, intermittent...at random intervals during recording would just stop and throw an error. (Format ERR was one message as I recall). Didn't happen every time I recorded, but often enough...probable two out of three times.

I tested in my "shop" and confirmed the issue, using two different cameras. Pulled the card out of service, held onto it for the longest time but I think I recently may have pitched it out. It's only an 8GB card, after all.
 
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