How I recovered from an SxS failure

[Clint Fleckenstein]

I’m confused…if you had an SxS card fail, how did you plug it into an SD card or Nikon DSLR? Did you have an SD card fail using an MxR or MxM adapter?

Cf

[Olof Ekbergh]

I am sure Barry is talking about SD cards. There is no way to plug a SxS card in “the new SD powerbooks”, other than a Sony SxS reader.

I have now shot more than 450hrs on SxS w/o any problems at all. Much better than in the tape days.

I also have the SD card adapter and 5 16GB SD cards, if I need to keep on shooting after my SxS cards and PHU-60 drives are full.

So far that has not happened. I have only tested the SD cards, OK so far, but I don’t really trust them.

Olof Ekbergh

[Barry Bishop]

My apologies I used an MxR adapter with a SD card. I mistyped because I do have an SxS card that has failed… and have yet to revive that. SxS cards DO fail.

Barry
Associate Web Producer/ Video Editor

[Alec Gitelman]

I just had an SDHC card fail on me and was able to recover it by purchasing data recovery software from lc-tech. https://www.lc-tech.com/home.html Try using that to recover the SxS. They have a demo version which lets you see if there’s anything to recover at all, before having to purchase it.

By the way, that happened on the first shoot with the camcorder that writes to SDHC cards natively (within I’d say 10 hours of use). In over 300 hours with the EX-1 and SxS cards I did not have a single problem. Which confirms my belief that it makes no sense to save on cards when data integrity is at stake.

[Craig Seeman]

Alec without any information about whether you tested the SDHC cards you haven’t backed up your opinion. Properly tested SDHC cards rarely lose data. In fact even a media restore message doesn’t result in data lose. This thread is about data lose with SxS which confirms SxS is also not immune to data lose.

The main difference between SxS and SDHC is that SxS has been vetted (tested) for specific intent whereas “we” must do the testing with SDHC. MxM did tests with ATP Pro cards and aren’t finding issues nor have I seen a single report of data lose with those cards.

In 11 months, sometimes recording for nearly 4 straight hours on 2 32GB SDHC cards I have not had a single media restore error let alone data lose. Do a proper test BEFORE using in mission critical situations and the cards are reliable.

[Alec Gitelman]

Craig,

my apologies. I spoke out of my heart because of a case of nerves and money that happened just two days ago. I admit i can’t back up my prejudice and thanks for letting me know that SDHC cards can be trusted in case i need to use them in the future. I know that no data format is 100% safe.

btw, this thread was actually about data loss on an SDHC card.

[Johnny Nguyen]

ok, i have same your proplem u can not do any thing if can not restore on camcorder if u lucky just restore only 22%. if bad luck only the way to do speacial process :
cut out card and jumper wire and use special tool do recover low level
cost 1 card scandisk ultraII 16gb is $300- $400
if u need help email me at hoavideo@gmail.com
the reason u have that issue is tranfer rate not right.
ok good luck

Jn

[Chris Jones]

We have had SDHC card failure with class 6 cards on our newly purchased JVC HR700. There was no error message, time recorded and time remaining was normal. Offering the card to our edit suite resulted in the message: media requires formatting. This occured on a card that had seen 2 shoots without problems. The difference was the failed shoot was a continous 1 hour, the previous 2 being ENG edit in camera. We have now backed up with the SxS recorder.

[Craig Seeman]

SDHC cards vary widely in quality. You can’t make blanket statements about them. When I talked to JVC they said there were certainly reports that some cards have quality control issues. Good SDHC cards are rock solid reliable. In order for you comments to have any value to anyone else you need to give the exact details including when purchased (as manufacturers changes specs without informing the public).

Sandisk Class 6 and Class 10 cards would be very reliable for JVC cameras for example.

[Chris Jones]

We do appreciate that qualities will vary, as stated, the failure occurred with an already used 32gbs class 6 card that had previously been no problem. Additional information is that the manufacturer was Pretec, purchased from a reputable dealer very recently. Tests at the studio on the same make card showed the same failure at 28 mins continous recording. Re-formatting gave 32 mins before failure, after the 5th recording the card would no longer format. My reason for posting is to raise awareness that certain cards could give reliability problems in the field. As a company that has used tape for over 30 years without problems, this failure naturally has jarred our confidence in solid state. Not a problem with the JVC camera, it performs very well.