Tascam 788 Hard Disk Upgrades

blckjck

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788, DR-03, US-1800
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http://www.tascamcontractor.com/788_files/FAQs/FAQ_choosing_a_hard_drive.html

Factors to Understand About Hard Drives

Hard drives are very advanced devices, and this section won't teach you everything about then. However, it should give you enough information about them to choose an appropriate one for the 788.

IDE, ATA/100 - The internal drive on the 788 is not a SCSI drive... it is IDE. When choosing a drive, stick with the ATA/100 drives. You'll probably only see the slower ATA/66 and ATA/33 drives in the used market; those slower drives could cause problems in sessions with lots of edits.

7200 RPM Rotational Speed - When picking a drive, stick with drives with a rotational speed of 7200 RPM. Higher numbers are OK, but it won't really give you anything more.

Access Time - This number basically refers to the time it takes from the time the drive is asked for data until it can retreive it. Since a hard disk recorder doesn't write in linear tracks, this specification is fairly significant. We recommend finding drives with an access time of 10ms (milliseconds) or less.

Low Profile, 3.5" Drive - Don't order full-height drives... they won't fit inside the chassis. You'll want to make sure it's "low profile" or "half height". The drives in the 788 are about 1" high... don't exceed that. Also, don't order 2.5" laptop hard drives; they won't fit any of the cables or brackets that are there, now.

Lastly, it's important to understand that a 60GB drive may only yield 55GB of space. The reason for this includes two factors:

1) Drives are sometimes listed as "unformatted capacity". All operating systems have to use a certain amount of space on the drive for the directory, and for dropping address locations. Since various drive formats vary how much overhead is required, the drives are shown as "unformatted" space. Once the format is done, you'll notice the difference.

2) Many drive companies round off. So, instead of figuring everything out as the true 1024MB=1GB, they'll calculate it at 1000KB=1 MB, 1000MB=1GB, etc. This tends to overstate the capacity ever-so slightly.

So, if you want to achieve 64GB of formatted space, you may need to get a 70GB drive.

Installing a New Hard Drive in Your 788

If you're installing a larger drive in your 788 to take advantage of v2.0's additional drive space recognition, it might be best to wait until you have v2.0 installed in your machine. (Otherwise you'll have to format the drive again when you get v2.0 installed so that the additional space can be seen.)

To install the drive:

1) Remove the 6 black screws in the drive plate cover. The drive cover should come loose easily.

2) Disconnect the IDE connector and power cable to the drive.

3) Remove the internal drive from the drive plate.

4) Look on the hard drive you're getting ready to install, and ensure that the jumpers on the drive are set for the new drive to be MASTER. (The jumper settings are usually printed on the drive itself, for convenience.)

5) Attach your new drive to the plate.

6) Connect the new drive to the IDE and power connectors from the 788. (These connectors are designed to only go in one way, so you can't do this wrong.)

7) Put the drive plate back on the 788, and reattach the screws.

When you turn the 788 back on, the machine should recognize that the internal drive is not formatted for the 788. As such, it will automatically format the drive for use with the 788. When the 788 is finished reformatting the drive, the 788 will reboot. You're then ready to use the machine.
 

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