I just started using a Samurai Blade and like it a lot. Going in I was going to use the drives like SxS cards and reformat the drives after archiving the footage. Atomos answered and email and wrote that it's not a good idea to keep reformatting the drives and to use new drives just once. The HDD drives are quite inexpensive and I plan to shoot on the those drives once, make a copy to a storage RAID, and then put them on the shelf for a backup. The SSD drives are more expensive and I was thinking of having two of those drives around to shoot when in high motion/vibration environments and then copying the files over to a storage RAID and then deleting the clips without reformatting and then using the drives again. Does that make sense? What are the best practices for using HDD and SSD drives in the Samurai Blade?
- Dan

Atomos answered and email and wrote that it's not a good idea to keep reformatting the drives and to use new drives just once.

This is ridiculous. Why don't we all just go back to tape.

I would argue new drives are potentially worse as they haven't had the a chance to fail yet, especially SSDs where a tiny manufacturing defect could brick the drive after filling it up 80% of the way.

If anyone here has some information I don't, please speak up, but myself and everyone I know has a workflow just like the one you are suggesting. Shoot -> Archive -> Wipe -> Reuse

I no longer have an Atomos Samurai, but I seem to remember you can't 'delete' individual 'Takes', the only way to delete the existing video images on the HDD or SSD, is to 'reformat' the entire disc. Please verify this.

I've always been told, in general, it's a bad policy to 'reformat' storage media over and over again. Now, if there was a way to delete individual 'Takes' on the device it would be a different story.

When I owned my Samurai, I kept one WD500 Gig HDD as my 'test article' and would capture various shots and then reformat the disc. I never had an issue, but I never used that HDD for critical work. For serious work, I would have multiple 'hard-drives', and use them until ~50% to 60% of capacity. I would consider the HDD/SSD my 'archive'.

Regards,

J.

I have just checked my Ninja 1, and James, you recall correctly, there is no way of deleting individual takes, Shots or Scenes. within the ninja, the sole option is to re-format.

You appear to be able to delete individual files from the HDD when it is connected to the computer, though.

This may be preferable to repeated re-formatting of the HDD.

There is a suggestion in the Ninja User Guide that falling HDD prices will make regarding the HDD as a latter day tape, and placing it on a shelf as an archive may be feasible. In my book, drive prices have a long way to fall before this becomes an economic proposition.

I am fortunate that my usage is not sufficiently large for this to be a problem for me.

Alan Craven...I never tried deleting the files from the HDD while on the computer. Hmmmm? If, that technique works without any issues, I guess it's a viable option.

I recently changed cameras to the PMW-200 and I'm using SxS-1 media. I was given the same 'warning' not to reformat, but delete the 'files' instead. So far, I have had no problems.

BTW, I loved my Atomos Samurai, along with the nice 'creamy' images it captured, but when I changed cameras, the PMW-200 can internally capture video in 4:2:2 Color Space without an external recorder. It's one less thing I have to mount to the camera and power.

Best regards,

J.