Sandisk Extreme III - shows no space left?

[steevg]

Guys,

Just a query - I'm not familiar with the CF card technicalities, but took my PDR100 out for a run recentlt, and it stopped recording. When I checked the disk was apparently full - I say apparently as I had about 1GB of actual recorder video on it, and 756kb free. The other 3.8 (??) GB was nowhere to be seen. I erased the CF totally, and the same thing - "properties" showed as disk full with 756kb free - once I formatted the disk, bingo! All 3.85 (or whatever) freed up for use.

What's happening with the card, and do I have to format every time to ensure all the disk is available to me???

Thanks,
Steve

[RandallNoll]

Steve,

That's odd. There must have been something else on the card that you couldn't see that was taking up space. If the card was brand new then I'm not sure I can explain it.

You should NOT have to format the card every time. Every once-in-a-while it is good practice to do so, just to get a clean slate, but we're talking maybe once a year.

I'd suggest you assume this was some sort of hidden file or anomoly and continue using the card. If the issue pops up again, you may have a bad card.

Also note that I've experienced an issue before with Windows where I selected files on the CF card, deleted them, and they were still there. This happened in Vista, I haven't had it happen in XP yet.

Hope this helps.

[steevg]

Thanks Randall,

Just so we can log this . . I first noticed this on a new iMac running OSX 10.5, so no apparent "hidden" files!

Next I used Windows XP (on the iMac), still no evidence of "hidden" files etc.

Then finally, I tried on a dedicated (Compaq) Windows XP machine! Same issue. So I re-formatted on this last machine. Have never seen this before, but I'll do some testing and get back to this posting.

Thanks for the prompt response by the way!

Have a great weekend!

Steve

[tristancliffe]

The hidden files to which he refers may not be visible, even if you turn on "show hidden files". A better way to state is to say you may have had a large corrupted file - it was there on the file allocation table as "used", but not actually visible in any software. A full format clears and rewrites the FAT (I think), and hence clears the problem.

Of course, the next question is why did you end up with a corrupted file. Most likely it's a write process that failed at some point, due to power cuts, dodgy contacts, a failing card or some such. If in doubt, try a different card. Or just use this one until it happens again.

[steevg]

Tristancliffe,

thanks for the reply, but we've just been trying this again today and it's still happening.

Let's go through what happens - and please remember, we're using Mac OSX 10.5.6!


OK, to start with, we formatted the card using a Windows XP machine (just to make sure). In FAT32 . . . . this clears all data and basically ensures the card is totally free of any data etc.
Next insert it into the ChaseCam, and using standard settings (Higher, not Highest video resolution etc etc), we recorded 15 mins of footage. Next we stopped the recording, truned the system off (removing the power from the vehicles cigarette lighter socket), then powered up again!
Started recording another 10 mins of footage, before powering down by again removing the plug from the cig socket.

Put CF card into the Firewire reader and burned to Toast.
DVD is burned without a hitch and loos good.

Now we simply highlight the contents (only the footage) on the card, and hit "send to trash"!

The CF card should now see all 3.81Gb of free space, . . . . . but it doesn't . . . we can only see about 3.5Gb . . . !

Go to the Trash, and empty it! Still the same free space reading!

The only way we can free it, totally, is to use Disk Utility, and "Erase" the disk to FAT32 (same as formatting in Windows).

That's it!

Any other comments would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Steve

[ProCam]

Hi Steve
i have encountered this problem also but mainly when i re-name the files on the card directory.
try this
1 record the video
2 insert card into card reader
3 drag the files from the card to you desktop, hard drive or any convinient place
4 then burn to toast from the new source
5 drag files from card directly to trash and empty trash immediatly, unless you need to kep them on the card in which case eject the card from your mac

regards

Mike

[steevg]

HI Mike,

Thanks for the information.
Yes I tried that and it did work . . . . another way to do it is (if you want to burn from the CF reader) simply erase (send to Trash on the Mac) the top level folder on the card - think it's DCIM or something like that.

I noticed that this problem is only evident if you try to remove ONLY the footage files, and don't empty the trash afterwards.

Anyone familiar with Apples' Automator application for this kind of thing!
Would be nice to do it all with a click of a button!

Thanks Mike.

[kgorman]

Yeah, this is common. Just empty the trash on OSX to make room.