Lexar CFast2.0 card died during recording

I'd like to share a bad incident I had last week:

I was working on a project for a big company and we had scheduled a short teleprompted talking head session with the CEOs. I was using my UM46k and two Lexar 3400x 256GB cards (about 1.5 years old now) and was recording in ProRes UHD. We had just finished all statements of the first CEO and the first one of the second CEO. Together with the press officer we successfully reviewed the takes and prepared the last statement.

In the middle of the recording of the second statement my UM46k suddenly showed an exclamation mark for the card in slot one and I couldn't stop the recording - no matter of what pressing on the LCD or the physical buttons. Only after a hard switch off and back on the camera was usable again.
And now it showed the "No card" for slot 1. My bad luck was that I thought I had always recorded to slot 2, and failed to recognize I'd accidentally switched to slot 1.

Back in the studio the card reader (Lexar Professional Workflow CR2 Rev A)) did not show the card from slot 1 and I realized that all footage was lost and the card dead. You can imagine how I felt when I had to call the client confessing that we have to schedule a re-shoot. Learned my lesson, took my Shogun Inferno with me and recorded to internal to CFast card and external to SSD. I became a little paranoid now when shooting with my UM46k. And I have replaced the card reader with a Sandisk Extreme Pro reader.

This is the first time for me that out of all those different camera flash media I have, one died. So I'd like to know what experience others have had in the past.



On a side note:
When looking for a replacement card on Amazon I found that Angelbird finally has new 512GB CFast2.0 cards (CF XT) on pre-order. They are described to have 550MB/s read and 480MB/s write speed.
For a whopping €1,000 + VAT

And they have also a new generation of 256GB cards for a good price: € 317 + VAT
550MB/s read and 390MB/s write speed

https://www.amazon.de/Angelbird-Pro-Spe ... ndigkeit-Röntgenstrahlsicher/dp/B075GSVJ1Q/ref=sr_1_2

Angelbird is a company located here in Austria, so I gave them a call to get an estimated release date. They told me that the 256GB cards will be available in around a week. For the 512GB cards there is no release date yet unfortunately - they are still working on the product.

OMG i feel with you Robert. This is THE horror szenario. How did your client react?

I also have 2 Lexar 3400x Cards and 2 Biwin 256GB Cards. Luckily i have never had any problems in the last 2 years on big Ursa and UM4.6k. Maybe i should also get that ssd back on the atomos shogun....

Sorry to hear that, Robert. Would give me heart failure!

Are you saying the recording of both officers went to Card 1 when you intended the second set of statements to go to Card 2?

Were you using exFAT or HFS+?

Did you have the option set to Stop Recording if Drop Frames?

Have you tried any of the disk recovery programs mentioned on this forum? I think one with good reviews was Data Rescue.


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OMG i feel with you Robert. This is THE horror szenario. How did your client react?

The client reacted astonishingly relaxed. But now it took me 2 additional appointments for shooting each CEO extra. All in all I had to suck up 4 additional hours of shooting, a new card reader and 2 new cards (I do not trust my second Lexar anymore), and several bottles of expensive wine for the client.

Sorry to hear that, Robert. Would give me heart failure!

I think my face turned chalk white after discovering the incident.

Are you saying the recording of both officers went to Card 1 when you intended the second set of statements to go to Card 2?

I had set the camera to record per default to Card 2, but when checking card status I accidentally switched to Card 1. So all statements went to Card 1. Which wouldn't normally matter - but...

Were you using exFAT or HFS+?
Did you have the option set to Stop Recording if Drop Frames?

I was using exFAT and Stop Recording if Drop Frames, but that means nothing as the card is dead.

Have you tried any of the disk recovery programs mentioned on this forum? I think one with good reviews was Data Rescue.

Tried that for sure - several recovery tools. And two different card reader. But the card is not seen by anything, tools just hang while trying to connect to it and I can't format the card either.
I'd say with high confidence it is electronically dead.

I've found several warnings online to not use the Lexar Workflow reader but no specific detail why the warning. I had assumed it will corrupt the file structure at some point if you just pull out the card without ejecting. But maybe it even kills the cards off slowly.

sorry to hear it!

There is a known bug with the Lexar CR1 and CR2.. but it's is not what you discribe here, as far as I know.

They have a problem when you eject them they can f'up the card.

Angelbird is a company i fully trust. They know their stuff. Check out this video by Cinema5D

I need to find out if anyone in Canada is handling Angelbird. That’s the difficulty for our tiny country. Wise products are very good and what I use. It was the only quality product available last spring when I made my purchases. Now if I only knew someone in Austria that could talk to someone at Angelbird about Canada.... (hint)

Thanks, Robert, for the additional information about the Lexar card.

To be fair to Wise, they are also planning to release new products but they’re not available as yet.



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I've lost footage from a live event where I couldn't reschedule and it is scary. I would like to add that I have purchased three 128g UHS II SD cards directly from the Angelbird website on two separate occasions and they are quick to ship from Austria to the USA. It cost me about 23 US dollars for UPS shipping, plus another 3.xx dollars for using a credit/debit card from a country outside the country where the purchase came from (or something to that effect). I also had several email conversations with Rebecca at Angelbird and she was extremely friendly and helpful.

Thus far, touch wood, I have had no troubles with the smaller 64Gb Lexar 3400x cards I have been using.

I have the habit of shutting the big URSA and the Sony EX1 camera down before pulling cards, a throwback to my SI2K days when you could not hotswap drives. - In light of the misadventure detailed above, I might stick with that habit.

Thus far, touch wood, I have had no troubles with the smaller 64Gb Lexar 3400x cards I have been using.

I have the habit of shutting the big URSA and the Sony EX1 camera down before pulling cards, a throwback to my SI2K days when you could not hotswap drives. - In light of the misadventure detailed above, I might stick with that habit.

Robert, I've always shut down the camera before inserting or pulling cards, and I always used the eject function in Windows before pulling out the card from the reader. So this won't protect from electronic failures.

The circuitry in these cards is small, but compared to what is coming, they’re like a ‘12-lane highway’ with 5 nanometer ‘pathways’ coming. Currently a complete electronic failure is rare, but I can only imagine these failures will become more frequent as the paths become increasingly narrow.


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Can someone send me a link to the cr1 and cr2 issues? I have 2 cr2 and haven’t had a problem yet on the Mac. Thanks in advance!


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Can someone send me a link to the cr1 and cr2 issues? I have 2 cr2 and haven’t had a problem yet on the Mac. Thanks in advance!

"• Lexar Professional Workflow CR1 Reader NOT RECOMMENDED!"
from the product description:
https://www.amazon.com/EgoDisk-PRO-256G ... 072BTWJH5/

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=30866&p=211301#p211099

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=53714&p=309316#p309316

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=62754&p=355818&#p355697

I need to find out if anyone in Canada is handling Angelbird. That’s the difficulty for our tiny country. Wise products are very good and what I use. It was the only quality product available last spring when I made my purchases. Now if I only knew someone in Austria that could talk to someone at Angelbird about Canada.... (hint)

Thanks, Robert, for the additional information about the Lexar card.

To be fair to Wise, they are also planning to release new products but they’re not available as yet.



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Rick, Angelbird has listed http://www.3diweb.com/ as a reseller in Canada.

Thanks Robert, I haven't had this issue yet but have responded to one of the threads to learn more. Thanks for putting these links together for me. Really appreciate that!

Robert, thanks for the link. I searched on that site for Angelbird. “La recherche n'a retourné aucun résultat”. Nada. Not found. I looked at their camera accessories that include Digistor SSDs, but no Angelbird products.


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Sorry for hearing that, Robert. Sometimes data loss costs you more than money...
Hope you will find a reliable media soon.

Robert, thanks for the link. I searched on that site for Angelbird. “La recherche n'a retourné aucun résultat”. Nada. Not found. I looked at their camera accessories that include Digistor SSDs, but no Angelbird products.

Rick, do you want me to call Angelbird and ask them about Canada?

Robert, that’s a kind offer.

This isn’t the first time that a distributor is listed for Canada and yet there are no products I’ve found. I am not faulting Angelbird as I could form a company tomorrow and negotiate rights for a product the day after and just sit in my hands after that.

It appears this Canadian distributor’s website is only in French as I did not find how to switch to English. You can call if you like and ask them if they can find their products listed on the web there. Many Quebec firms are great and helpful and do include English as an option. I can manage the French though so only noting their lack of a professional website.

I don’t know when Wise will have comparable products for the SSD option or when they’ll update their CFast 2 products, but I know they’re good to deal with. If I can ever get a long enough break in shooting I’ll be updating firmware on my CFast 2 Cards, so this SSD option is something for the future, not urgently required.


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Rick, I just got off the phone with Angelbird asking about a Canadian distributor.
You can get the CFast cards here:
https://1sourcevideo.com/market/index.p ... lbird.html

256GB card:
https://1sourcevideo.com/market/index.p ... 256gb.html

They are delivering to Canada and do special orders from Angelbird quite fast.

Thanks, Sir Robert! 4TB $3,200.


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Thanks, Sir Robert! 4TB $3,200.

Ding, ding, ding. Rick's selling his mortgage

Ha! Paying down my mortgage each year. About 30 payments to go and I’m debt free. Not easy this year with the girls graduation expenses!


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I found a super cheaper card called Super Talent. Paid less than 200 Canadian dollars for 256gb. I can record 4K RAW 3:1 24 FPS with no loss of frames. Pretty impressed. Cant get 4K RAW Lossless 60fps though even with dual card, but 4K RAW 3:1 60fps dual card works fine.

Long story short, if you have the 4K UM, or film in 4K and never film in Lossless, there is an extremely cheap alternative!

Last week one of my lexar SD UXS Cards died, it was a 128GB 150MB, it was 2 years old, maybe formatted 20 times. Lucky it died after inserting the card into a GH5 so nothing was lost but man it feels bad to use Lexar cards theese days.