P2 Store Failure
 

Hey guys,

I just finished some shooting today and got home to download about 4 8GB cards from my P2Store, but when I connected it to my computer, none of the drives showed up. Launched P2Store Manager and got the following message:

Hard drive malfunction has been detected. Please contact authorized service personnel.

Ouch. Two strange things though:

1. I can still copy cards to the drive. No error messages when I do this.

2. I just upgraded the software on the P2Store to the latest version. This is the first time I have used it since the upgrade.

Anyway, I'm guessing the data is on there, but something else is wrong. Any suggestions? Could I run DiskWarrior and recover the data? Thanks!

Peter

before you run disk warrior, you should take it to panasonic. running disk warrior might make the drive unreadible period.

Just curious - what kind of error message would you expect from the P2 Store itself when you copy data in from the cards? There is no LCD on it ... just some LEDs and progress indicator bars.

Some combination of blinking lights ;) In all seriousness, if the hard drive was not functional, I doubt the P2Store would copy and verify a card (which I've tested and it does). So it seems the P2Store is successfully writing data to the hard drive, it just can't get it off there.

This is the first time I've ever had trouble with the P2Store (what a great device it is!) and it only happened after I did a software upgrade on the Store. So.....hopefully it if fixable.

Peter

I suspect it might not be the physical HDD itself ... but the USB interface port - is faulty. You better take it down to Panasonic first before you destroy your data.

I put a P2 card in with data and copied it (using the P2Store as the card reader) no problem, so that probably rules out the faulty USB interface.

Peter

What I meant was - the HDD interface to the USB port ... the input coming in from the P2 Card slot is fine ... but the output from the HDD is faulty.

Gotcha. I will call Panny and see if I can get it fixed.

Peter

Thanks for the info.

I'm always concerned that the P2 Store will fail without notice and take an hour's worth of material with it.

Me too. Amazingly, I've been using this P2Store since they first came out, and it's never had a problem. I think it has something to do with the software upgrade. The SMART status on the drive checked out ok just before I upgraded. Anyway, going to call Panny Monday to see what can be done.

Peter

There are plenty of error messages that the drive can throw. There is a error LED and it plus the other LED's on the case blink or stay steady to give you a code. Reference the manual and you can check what error the P2store has encountered. Has happened to me a couple of times, usually something innocuous and I have never lost footage, still scared me though when it is in the middle of a shoot.

I know when you are planning for a shot, it's hard to keep things straight. But as soon as something new comes up - ie software upgrade, I try to test it before I go on a shoot.

Good luck, let us know the result.

Peter,

Any updates on your P2 Store failure? Did you managed to get Panny to fix the problem?

Thanks,
TS