Hyperdeck OCZ drive Fail

HI, over the past 2 days i have had 4 OCZ 240gb Drives fail, out of a total of 16 drives we have in constant use.

we record a lot of confernece 7 - 8 hours a day,
i have the failed drives in both our Hyperdeck studio, set to uncompressed quicktime. sometimes it would record 2 hours no problem, other times only 5 mins before the red lights starts to flash.

so i then swaped over to our Hyperdeck shuttle, which is set to Proress422 ( we run 2 hyperdecks one uncompressed and the other proress ) and again sometimes no trouble and on other ocasions you may get 5 - 7 mins before the flashing record light...


ANY IDEAS ??

very worried that i can no longer trust the OCZ drives, they are less than 6 months old and at the most have only had 100 cycles ( recording / formating )

recording SD 16:9
drives formatted as mac OS extended

replys / comments please

Hi Mark,

I do have the same drives. I had no problems YET.. But i did a whole lot less of Cycles on them.

But you confirm something i have read somewere else on this forum. Somebody else (can't remeber who) had the same problem with a couple of drives failing in rapid time. Completly DEAD!!

The problem seems to be the OCZ drives itself. When i asked a BMD rep on a fair he said it could have to do with firmware inside the drive. So i opted to update all drives? He said NO! If it works don't update. If you have problem update the firmware.

Not sure if you even can reach the drives anymore?

I think BMD should remove the OCZ drives from the compatible list. Because i think a lot of people will get the same problem in time..

Here is the firmware update tool from OCZ http://www.ocztechnology.com/ssd_tools/SandForce_Based/

That is the problem with sandforce based drives in general, they are not trustworthy.

I've had problems with OCZ and Hyperdeck studio
1. REC lamp flashes when recording up to 5 hours
- I suspect that by OCZ (Vertex3 240GB). Before that, I had to delete the data, not the format. I only REC SSD after formatting, the problem has not reappeared!
2. REC and stop every 10 minutes, to minutes 4 Timecode no running. No buttons work. Hot to pull the plug. Data has been written to the drive.
- I do not know why, but make sure that the not OCZ error. BMD!

I'm the guy who had 6 of my 8 OCZ drives hard fail.

They never gave me a lick of trouble recording though. One day they just stopped mounting. Disk Utility couldn't "see" them either.

To the OP:
You are talking about the OCZ VERTEX 3 240GB drives, right? Not the 4 series or any other OCZ variant?

If so, these are the approved drives and I do indeed have 8 of them. now that OCZ has replaced the failed ones.

I record ProResHQ on mine, which should be pretty close in data rate to your SD Uncompressed.

The ONLY time I have ever had issues with flashing red indicating dropped frames was when the video signal became compromised temporarily, such as when a well-intentioned audio tech unplugged my cable at a barrel connector, dropping the signal briefly. I typically run my drives to within 4 minutes of full. Mine don't have quite the number of cycles that yours do however. Lots of full day recordings though.

How are you getting your video input into the HyperDeck? SDI or HDMI? How is the signal being generated? Is it an SDI signal out of a timebase-corrected or frame-store sync video mixer? HDMI out of a camera? What frame rate? Are you passing analog video through a converter? Cable length, ESPECIALLY if HDMI.

My initial thoughts are that the signal is being compromised, even for a fraction of a second, causing the integrity of the timed data stream to fail.

Hi Shaun,

signal is SDI imbeded, no way the cable can be interfied with as its only 1/2m long, Hyperdeck is in the same rack as my vision mixer main frame ( we have a datavideo MS900 mobile studio that is fed from 4 x BVW550wsp cameras with SDI CCUs etc)

bang on with the drives they are the OCZ VERTEX 3 240GB drive

what is strange is that it sometimes happens, and other times they are ok...we never lose the signal from the mixer as the SDI is also fed to Projectors via a 2nd output and they seem fine, i will have a look at the SDI DA in the morning, maybe this is causing the problem with a temp. drop in signal ?

in the meantime i have gone back to recording a "dvfile" using the built in recorder that comes as part of the MS900. just dont like the "dv" compressed quailty that you get ( upto 20 hours on a 250gb)


Hi Xtreemtec,
thanks for the info , i will try to update the firmware. for the affected drives, maybe that will help ( it cant make it any worse ))


keep you all posted on what i find out..

mark

Thanks Mark.

Three things I'd suggest TRYING...

1. Do you reformat the drives every time you clear them of files? I do and this seems to work fine for me instead of dragging files to the trash and emptying it, although that works fine as far as I can see so far the handful of times I've needed to use a drive before I could "blow away" some files on it.

2. Can you patch one of the camera CCUs into the recorder directly via SDI and try doing a long recording just to remove any doubt that the signal from the Datavideo is compromised?

3. The obvious: can you try another SDI cable, just to ensure it isn't a poorly seated pin or something?

Thanks Mark.

Three things I'd suggest TRYING...

1. Do you reformat the drives every time you clear them of files? I do and this seems to work fine for me instead of dragging files to the trash and emptying it, although that works fine as far as I can see so far the handful of times I've needed to use a drive before I could "blow away" some files on it. -- Always try when i can to reformat before each re-use, just seems very random as some times the particular drives work ok, and the next they dont...WHAT do format do you format your SSDs to

2. Can you patch one of the camera CCUs into the recorder directly via SDI and try doing a long recording just to remove any doubt that the signal from the Datavideo is compromised?... DID NOT think of that will give it a try. but as i said above sometimes i can go days with no problems

3. The obvious: can you try another SDI cable, just to ensure it isn't a poorly seated pin or something?

...Tried various cables with and without going into a SDI da


WILL keep you all posted on what i find

mark

The OCZ Vertex and Agility SSD's are not particularly optimised for hauling HD Videos, especially 10 or 12 bit that the BMCC outputs. Their Octane offerings, especially those above 512GB will do nicely. Here is a comparison chart, though old, but will give you an idea. And though not featured in the chart, the drives from Sandisk will champion your cause, according to reviews.

http://techreport.com/review/22078/ocz- ... te-drive/7