Corrupted or broken Lexar card? How to proceed?

[Jerry J]

Hi I'm new here. Need some help. (btw i'm still having fun with ML, thank you to all developers)

I've been testing/filming for a few weeks with H264 up to 2,5 times with good results on 1 Lexar card (16 Gb. 800x).
RAW recording (v1.0), on same card worked (to some extend) too.

Camera 5Dmk2. Nightly Build 2016oct10
(thought it would be better to start with older version)

Today I tried filming RAW v2.0 (with this same nightly build) for first time. So i loaded these modules:

mlv_rec.mo
mlv_snd.mo
mlv_play.mo
(i'm almost 100% sure i did not also load v1.0 at same time)

First take at 1920 pix stopped after 3 sec. ML on-screen warning said something like: "card corrupted or card broken".
Tested camera with other card: camera is fine.

Placing card in camera, ML won't load. Canon Firmware on screen text says: "Card not formatted, format in camera". When i try to do that it says "cannot format card". On my desktop computer (Mac) the card only shows up in Disk Utility. So I can reformat.

Questions:
A: Are these the right steps i should follow?
1 Try to format card.
2 If possible place same ML version on card again.
3 Try to restart camera and ML with card.

B: If this is OK. Can I format with DiskUtility on Mac, and which structure should I format to, so it works with Canon? Or should i use other format software?
C: Or am I wrong as to what is going on and should i follow another procedure?
C: Any Idea what caused this, did I perhaps do something terribly wrong to cause this?

I'm a bit afraid to brick the card more than it is already. And I'm trying to learn  . . . .
Thanks in advance.

[Walter Schulz]

You missed the essential Q. Is it ok for you to lose card's content or do you have to recover it, whatever it takes?

[Jerry J]

Sorry, good Q!

I was just testing, so no recovery needed.

[Jerry J]

Can anyone answer please? I'm unfarmiliar with formatting.

[Walter Schulz]

Try Disk Utility.

[Jerry J]

Tried everything in Disk Utility. Card is lost.

I've worked as a professional with CF cards since the beginning of digital photography. Never lost a card.  I'm nog blaming here, its all experimental :-). But to me it FEELS as though there is a relationship with RAW recording. And perhaps with recording in a RAW format that was a bit to high for the data rate of the 800x card. I've read an another thread here on this topic that ended in a discussion where somebody said something like "you can't mechanically break a card with high data rates". I agree from what i know of electronics. But is the ML software or the camera cardwrite software bricking the card in some way?

Thanks anyway Walter.

[Walter Schulz]

ML does not reprogram cam's card interface.

Are you able to format the card? Are you able to see (and delete) card's partition(s)?

[Jerry J]

The card is not visible in the finder. Only visible in Disk Utility. Tried all options in there (translated from dutch OS, from left to right): 'first aid', 'clear and format', 'partitioning', 'recovery' and from the top left of screen 'verification'.

Nothing works only get messages in the logs indicating it can't read the card. (translated from dutch: 'can not recognize filesystem', or: 'no filesystem found that can be activated'. I allso made a disk image from the card on desktop which then can't be opened by OS.

** ML does not reprogram cam's card interface.** Ok. But then perhaps cam's card interface does something that bricks the card (or the newer cards) when data rate is so high? (As the original 5dmk2's interface was intend for cards from 2008, when both maximum speeds and sizes where smaller). On the other hand you Walter should have seen that correlation with the 5dmk2 as you read/replied so many threads?

[Walter Schulz]

CF-card specifications don't get violated/invalid/unreliable by using them. And trust me: Developers of such chips/interfaces have tools and devices to test them thoroughly.

Back to your card: Google for "diskutil" and how to use it. Please use it with care. You can easily mess up your system just by cleaning up the wrong disk and a single typo can be fatal ...

[Jerry J]

Thanks. I know how to choose the right drive. Used it with internal and external drives before. Just not with CF cards for digital camera's. I was insecure about that. Ill move on to other cards now.