Update from the trenches... drive failure!

filmstox

filmstox

Well-known member
In a thread a couple of days ago, Jan helped me out of a bind with the P2 viewer software. I needed to confirm that about 75 gigs worth of P2 DVCPro50 was successfully transfered to its new long term storage drive. Everything looked good and the drive went on the shelf.

A few minutes ago, I was reading the thread about an MXF file to test and thought I would upload a sample of a p2 MXF. So I pulled the drive off the shelf, plugged it in and was welcomed with a "File Corrupted and Unreadable" error! Oops! It looks like there was a problem with my firewire enclosure when my Laptop put itself in hibernation mode.

So now I am running the drive through GetDataBack drive restoration program to see how much can be saved from the drive.

It's funny, I'm actually really happy to have all of this craziness going on with this project. When we shot it, I went out of the way to shoot it on P2 with the 800 so I could try out the workflow before the HVX hits the market. I've known from the beginning that the weakness of P2 would be the archiving of the footage, and it is indeed working out to be the case. My company produced the project and I wanted to get the kinks worked out when it wasn't on someone elses dime.

The good news is that the footage exists on two other drives (although as quicktime files from my NLE) so if this drive is a wash I'm not completely hosed.

So the lessons learned thus far:
- The $20 after rebate Hitachi HD might just be a case of "you get what you pay for"
- Multiple back up HDs are a must.
- HD recovery software will be just as important as lens paper in my kit.

I'll let you know how it all comes out after the 23 hour scan finishes. And hopefully have some MXF files to post for others to experiment on.

-David C. Smith
LA / OC D.P.
 
filmstox said:
I'll let you know how it all comes out after the 23 hour scan finishes. And hopefully have some MXF files to post for others to experiment on.

-David C. Smith
LA / OC D.P.
Click to expand...
Dave, you're finding out what some of us already know. Tapeless workflow is full of areas where data can be lost. No tape means no built in backup. I hope you can get your data back. I was the originator of the other thread and occasionally work with XDCam MXF. I havn't tried P2 MXF specifically and would experiment with whatever you've got.

good luck and best wishes.
 
Thanks for that post, David. This is a clear example of how adopting an IT workflow (as Panasonic likes to point out in the P2 whitepaper) means incorporating every aspect of IT, disadvantages and advantages both. And for IT, frequent backups are imperative. Whole sections in certification books, like those for Microsoft, and books on system/network administration are devoted to backup schemes: how often, incremental versus full, and keeping a copy of data off-site are always mentioned.

I never thought this would be much of a problem since I feel that the majority of us are comfortable with computers anyway, but backups are frequently overlooked, even at the bigger companies (along with security, now that I think of it).

Thanks for that reminder! Need to workout the archive solution...
 
Dave, good luck with the recovery. I hope all is well. And thanks for the offer of sending us a real DVCPRO-50 P2 file to experiment with!

At the moment, my intended archive plan with the HVX is to get two identical 2.5" external firewire drives to take into the file and do a "double dump" of each P2 worth of files to the drives.

Hopefully one of the two will survive intact long enough to dump into two identical big SATA drives at the end of the day, one of which will be the "archive" while the other is the work drive. The 2 firewire drives will be purged and put back into the field the next day.

It ain't much of a plan, but it's a plan. :)

Regards,

Jim Arthurs
 
Jim Arthurs said:
Hopefully one of the two will survive intact long enough to dump into two identical big SATA drives at the end of the day, one of which will be the "archive" while the other is the work drive. The 2 firewire drives will be purged and put back into the field the next day.
Click to expand...
Jim,

It's a start but I've use the same scenario and there is such an animal as a "delayed write error" on a firewire drive that will currupt your file transfer. Be careful with plugging and unplugging the drive. We've used the same setup in our portable audio DAW for a couple of years. Man it's a PAIN, but that's what it takes to get 2 hours of 10 channel digital audio.
 
Thanks Dave. I'm looking forward to trying out the DVCPRO50 P2 file.

I hear you in regards to possible file corrupt or drive issues. I do believe
any valuable data should be backed up.

Just a note: I can't count the amount of times I had a DV tape glitch. Granted the footage was available, although a slice of time ruined due to the glitch., and with my luck, usually an important scene..... LOL

Steve
 
IMHO Fireware data transfer is never the most reliable. Using Storcase IDE and SCSI bays in my computer seems to have proven a much more trustworthy.
rjr_animated.gif


Make your hard drive(s) removable with Data Express or RhinoJR removable drive enclosures. All you need is an available internal or external system expansion bay that can support hard drives.
 
Evinsky,

I've been browsing around for just such a device. This one shows way more promise than anything I had found. Thanks...

BTW,
The scan still has 11 hours to go! :)

-David Smith
LA / OC D. P.
 
Evinsky,

Where can that be found? That looks really useful.

I despise laying footage to hard drive, but until there is another high-capacity solution that's workable to edit from, that's all we've got. Having an instant raid backup would surely help.
 
Found it on cooldrives.com but the only trouble I see with that particular unit is that it relies on software RAID not hardware, so unless I'm missing something, you won't be able to mirror straight out of the camera, you will have to have the enclosure plugged into a laptop to work. They do have some other options that have a hardware controller built in but they don't have the cool looking case :)

My budget for this rig keeps creeping up but I'm confident it will make up for it and then some (hopefully and then a LOT... I need a vacation!)
 
Well the scan finally finished and it looks like the data is intact. I'm now copying it to another drive and will know for sure in the morning. As soon as it's on the new drive, I'll pull out a clip and post it on my website for experimentation.

It seems like Get Data Back is a very worthy product.

-David C. Smith
LA / OC D.P.
 
Thanks Jan,

I think it was the drop to standby mode that caused the problem in the first place. The recovery and transfer are happening on my desktop so it should be o.k.

I'll be adding the "always on" power profile on my laptop as SOP when using it in the field for transferring files.

-David C. Smith
LA / OC D.P.
 
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