Card trouble

[tom clapson]

Hi all, I lent a 256 Lexar cfast card for the Alexa mini to a friends shoot. They had no dit and are saying the card cannot be read by their Mac? I wasn’t on the shoot so I can only assume they formatted the card in camera before filming. I’ve attached the screen shots they forwarded to me. Any ideas folks?

[Aapo Lettinen]

they did already shoot something on the card and it is not showing anything?

it may be a broken partition table, I have seen that happen once before on Mini. They can try another reader or test if the camera can still read the files. 

If not, it is best to let a pro dit or a data recovery company to handle it if it's the partition table problem. It is possible to fix on the field but that may be somewhat risky to the files and needs data recovery programs.

I personally only do this type of fixes to my own materials (has happened couple of times with SD cards) when there is no high reshooting costs if something goes wrong. can happen for example if the card reader is faulty and destroys some partition data when inserting the card. the simplest method has been to format the card to wipe the partition table clean and then use a recovery program to try to find the missing files from the "emptied" card. most of the time it has been worked though I have never tested it on UDF cards and I don't recommend trying it to any valuable footage

Edited May 29, 2019 by aapo lettinen

[J.T. White]

This has happened to me once, wherein my computer would read that the media was attached, but it wouldnt "mount".  For me it wasn't a card issue, it was a cfast reader problem.

If the camera can still read the files, and they're using a lexar cfast reader, i believe that specific reader can be formatted for either a mac or windows in disk utilities therefore making some computers unable to mount the media. The best option would be to try another reader.

 

Edited May 31, 2019 by J.T. White