Does anyone know what this means?

I have been using my camera for a few weeks now and this is the first problem that I've encountered. I was offloading one of the P2 cards to a laptop in the field and it locked up the computer. Most of the files were transferred (and are working just fine after importing into Avid, thank God!) but when I put the card back in the HPX500 to try to reformat I get: System Error - P2 Micron Error, along with a flashing tally light and an audible alarm. Pulling the P2 card out and turning off the camera, then turning it back on again fixes the problem. However, there is no way to fix the P2 card that I know of.

I have been very carefull to eject the cards from the OS after offloading and before simply removing it from the system, and I have been handling them very carefully - removing them after a shoot, putting them in their case, etc. Is there something that I'm missing, or do I have a bad card.

Looking forward to any advice because I have a shoot coming up next week and it would be great to have all 4 16gig cards.

Additional info (in case it helps):

HPX-500
Using P2 Viewer on a PC laptop
Editing on Avid Xpress Pro

Thanks,
John

John,

This is the first time I've heard of this error; I'd highly suggest that you take both camera and card into your local shop where it was purchased or, contact the nearest Panny repair facility to you.

Barry Green might have dealt with this before but that's a new one for me.

I've only seen that error in context with using the "frame rate hack" -- and in that case, I kinda figured I was asking for it... :)

I have never seen that type of error when trying to format a card! Try formatting it in your computer (are you using a Windows laptop? If so you can format it by just right-clicking the drive letter and formatting...)

Thanks for the quick help!

Unfortunately, when I try to format through the PC it hangs the system. I've tried going through the Disk Management system (which tells me it's a healthy drive) but when I try to write to it either through P2 Viewer or just sending a file through windows explorer it tells me there's an I/O error. When I format through Disk Management it appears to start working but then I get a pop-up in the system tray that says an error occured while writing to the drive.

It sounds to me like a bad card, but it worked fine for almost two weeks of constant use. I can't imagine that the P2 cards just fail like that. To me that sounds pretty scary . . . especially dealing with the clients that I have to deal with. Is it common for a card to fail almost overnight?

As I say, I've not heard of this since the 2GB P2 cards but it's always possible there was a manufacturing defect of some sort. At any rate it would be covered by the warranty as long as the card has no visible damage.

Contact your local Panny repair facility; that's the first step.