Media too slow issues and suggestions

[witzendoz]

I have been trying to figure out why some hard drives have a media too slow issue and some don't.

First the obvious: the drive should have had a "Low Level Format" whenever possible to clean up drive fragmentation and wayward files and folders, as suggested in the manual. The drive must then be "Initialised" to the required format.

The drive must have a good power supply and have good cooling.

Now we have that covered, why is it some drives work like a dream never giving any problems and some are complete dogs. Theories:

1) Higher speed drives don't seem to cope as well. Not sure about this one yet, I was thinking that the higher voltage draw and extra heat may have been causing problems?

2) Larger drives don't work as well as smaller drives. I thought this was the problem until yesterday when a 18gig failed. I thought that the larger drives had to work harder accessing the data.

3) Ultra 320 drives give more problems than U160 drives.
The 18 gig I had fail yesterday was a U320 drive which has made me think about this.

Could anyone having Media Too Slow messages please post what they are finding regarding the Brand, Model, U160 or U320, drive size and location details (machine mounted, external etc).

Remember the original drives we all 9gig 7200 rpm and never gave problems, my original one when the machine was bought new still works fine as is my most reliable drive.

Cheers
Alan.

 

[TMT]

Hey Allan I would like to know this as well. Thats why I logged on today. My 72Gig drive was working fine last night until I really started filling it up. Then all controls of the MX started operating slow. Pulling up projects started to also slow down to a halt. I cant exactly format the drive at this point, its got all of my saved songs on it...Should I go to an external drive?

 

[witzendoz]

The drive slowing down without a "Media Too Slow" message is a different problem. Sounds like power supply, too full drive (which it sounds like in your case) or fragmented drive issue (also happens as the drive fills up). Are you saying it's getting slow without "Media Too Slow" appearing?

I have a set up where I can mount the scsi drives on my PC, when you do this you find that the drive has a ton of song folders and allocation folders on it that you don't see when looking via the MX. These files hang around even when the project has been deleted. Eventually these files start causing problems which is why Tascam recommend "low level format" as often as possible.

Have you got a computer connected to the MX via ethernet? Why not back up these projects via ethernet to the computer until you get this sorted?

I always recommend that the scsi drives are set up in an external case or tower, you have at least 2 drives connected and that you back up the project to the second drive every time there is a keeper take. The reason I recommend an external case is that the MX power supply has less load and less heat with no internal drive.

Another thing, if you have 2 drives and one drive starts "media too slow" the projects on it can still be recovered you will only loose the part you were recording when the message came up. When copying between drives the drives are not working as hard as when recording so the drive will hang together.

Cheers
Alan.

 

[timmdrumm]

Just saw this post and I have to say I agree 100% with Alan. He gave me the same valuable advice a few years back, and I immediately picked up several external enclosures and disconnected the internal drives. It's made a huge difference in performance. I only get the "media too slow" message if I try to push too far between formatting.

I use 36GB and 18GB Cheetah drives that run at 15K RPM (picked up on the cheap on eBay), though I do have some 10K and 7.5K drives that work well, too. I have been fortunate so far, in that I've only had 1 die. I'm running multiple 2424s, and normally have 2 drives on each machine, backing up after keeper takes as Alan suggests.

I never format or initialize on the 2424s; I always format on my office computer, using the free program guiformat for FAT formatting the drives. Usually, I do a quick format, then drag the backed up files in the TL Projects folder (along with the TL WAVEFORM DB file) from computer to the SCSI drives. Initialization on the machine creates the folders and the WAVEFORM DB file, so dragging them ove accomplishes the same thing, albeit with my files intact. Saves a lot of time, as the 2424s are painfully slow when they format. Every month or so, I'll do a "complete" format on the computer. I also do this whenever I get new drives in. It's been working well for me.

That being said, I hope I didn't just jinx tonight's session!

Timm

 

[Gerrit Straten]

Guy's, ladies,
The media too slow thing is now happening to me. I tried to purchase new technologie and looked for a company that has scsi ssd's, found one and asked them for the price. And there my dream of having no more problems went awac. A 73gb drive would be 1250 $. Too much I think. Anyone has experience with scsi ssd's? Or knows a spot where I can buy them for a lesser price?
I also thought about buying a scsi to sata adapter and them buy a sata ssd drive. Thee are much cheaper. But will it work?

Ger