Panasonic P2 store

[d.w.vaughn]

What am I doing wrong?

What am I doing wrong?

I had not used my P2 Store for a few months and used it yesterday. I am unable to copy files from the Store to my PC. Details: I reformated the P2 Store before shooting video with my HVX-200. For three 8GB cards I placed each in the Store and pushed the START button for a few seconds. It took some time (maybe 10 minutes) as the progress bars moved to include 100% and stopped flashing. I then ejected the card, reinserted the card and formatted the P2 card. The P2 Store was switched to verify. It all seemed to go per usual. Connected to my PC, the USB light is green and 8 drives appear in Windows Explore (though pop up windows asking what I wanted to do for each drive do not appear as they have in the past; this seems important). When I select each drive in Windows Explore, I get a window that asks me if I want to format the drive. If I place a P2 card in the Store, that card is recognized and I was able to copy those files to my PC. Windows Disk Management recognizes the drives but says there is 3.71GB of free space on each of the 8 drives. There should be 3 cards worth of files on the P2 Store. If not, what did I do wrong? Any help will be appreciated. Thanks. David.

 

[d.w.vaughn]

Nevermind. In Windows Disk Management I just noticed 3 unlabeled volumes with 7.25GB on each. I assigned a drive letter to the first and I am now copying those files to my PC hard drive. Perhaps it is related to already having drives through "Z" on my computer. I don't know but I feel better. David.

 

[Jan_Crittenden]

There isn't really anything that has taken the place of the P2Store.

Well in a way there is, it is the P2 Gear which can also step in as the P2 Drive, on-location playback and in general a device the has a lot of different applications. And with the P2 Gear, you do get to choose the dirve size you wish and you can had that drive off to a client. To me it only makes sense when looking at the size of the cards and they continue to grow. Shoot I can buy a 160GB Pocket Drive for $110. And when the cards get bigger the pocket dirves will too, so maybe the next one I get is the 250GB drive.

There is no upgrade path for the P2Store, yet Panasonic continues to market it as a field recording solution. How does this make sense when card sizes have nearly surpassed the total capacity of the P2Store? Perhaps we should get a lower cost per GB 8GB card - say $200 a piece? That's $25/GB instead of the ~$50GB we're paying for 16 and 32.

Well it is a field archive solution for those folks that are working with smaller cards, say 8GBs and lower and a lot of news crews are working this way. The initial price for the P2 Card is not relative to the cost per GB equation unless you only record on them once and put them on the shelf. Every time you use them the price per GB goes down. And unlike tape you can lease the cards as they are equipment. That said the 8GB card is coming back but am not sure of the pricing as yet.

Conversely, I would love to see a P2Store size device with hot-swappable 2.5" drives.

I really do not see this happening, but perhaps the engineers have something they are not sharing.


Best regards,

Jan

 

[Barry_Green]

That's what the P2 Gear is meant to be. A field offloading solution with interchangeable swappable drives. But instead of being mounted internally, they're mounted externally via USB.

The P2 Gear is what they make, it's the successor to the P2 Store. It's not the same thing, but it is what they offer and it's the direction they've taken. Look at it again. It does everything the P2 Store does, but with cheap interchangeable external hard disks instead of a fixed-capacty size or a risky handling of bare drives (which may be a risk you're comfortable with, but as a manufacturer I bet they're not).