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Welder
19-02-2011, 11:42
(This will have the vinyl and CD boys rolling about in the aisles ;))
I recently bought a pair of 1 tera-byte WD drives (last batch are full) I buy in pairs, one for play, one for back up.
I either rip direct to external drive using my main PC, or transfer data manually from the main PC.
I don’t use any back up software.
All my external drives are ac powered.

I transferred a few albums to the new drives and sat down to listen to a Medeski-Martin and Wood track and imagine my surprise when after a few bars bits of Yello The Race joined in…..and then left…..and then rejoned; bit pefect, make I larf, not even the right tune! :doh:

I deleted both tracks and re-copied and Yello lost interest in joining in and all was fine again :lol:
This would seem to be a software problem. The WD drives have auto de-frag and some other stuff to do with drive maintenance (anyone know what else comes with these drives already installed?)

I wondered if anyone else has experienced similar problems.

Ali Tait
19-02-2011, 11:58
Not heard of that one before! I use a Drobo, which backs itself up automatically, sharing the music amongst it's four drives. Even if a drive fails, you don't lose anything, just fit a new one and you're away. They are a bit pricey new, but come up on ebay at fairly reasonable prices. It's a good fit and forget solution IMHO. I also back everything up to another external drive just to be extra safe.

Welder
19-02-2011, 12:45
Hi Ali.

Yep, it’s a weird one.
I can only assume in the burn and compact process the WD software got confuzzeled and stuffed the wrong bits in the wrong place.
This shouldn’t happen though. I would have thought the software should do some sort of sum check in the process.
Drives are in general mechanically pretty reliable in my experience; it’s the software that causes the problems, much like computers in general.
Unfortunately all the external drives that are mains powered have manufacturer’s software installed.
If I was a bit braver and had the time it would be interesting to rip out all the software and return it to an empty drive.

I had thought about a Drobo but as you say they’re rather expensive and I really want to keep everything as simple and cheap as possible.
Manual backup isn’t really a chore unless your adding huge amounts of data on a daily basis and the less computer software there is in the chain in general the happier I and the music are.

Reid Malenfant
19-02-2011, 12:53
Hi John, did you defrag the drive after you stuffed your files on there? I know you say that the drive has inbuilt defragging but i know how crap windoze defragger is as i use voptXP which shows how much of a mess things get in once loaded.

I won't laugh, but i'd have loved to see your face :eyebrows:

Welder
19-02-2011, 13:10
Hi Mark.

I reckon my chin must have hit the floor :eek::lolsign:
Much as I like Yello, I would much rather they didn’t join in when they felt like it :doh:

It was a brand new drive mate so no, I hadn’t defragged it.
I don’t use the windoz defrag stuff. I’ve got the pro version of DirMS-S.

WAD62
19-02-2011, 16:32
Bizarre indeed...!

Almost sounds like some form of pointer corruption, might be worth running chkdsk on the new drives, also probably worth giving them a right good formatting too, get rid of the WD bloatware...:scratch:

Ali Tait
19-02-2011, 18:34
Interesting what you chaps say about Windows defragger. I've never defragged my music drives. What would you suggest that is free for W7 64 bit?

Welder
19-02-2011, 19:56
Hey Ali.

A lot of external drives come with a defragger/compacter installed. These are automatic; they do it as you burn to disc. Have a look with the windows defrag analyzer and if the drive is free of fragments then leave well alone is my view.

Hey Will.

Problem is mate if you take the bloatware off the drive you invalidate the warranty.
The other thing is, while I have had this problem on this particular drive the defragger/packer works pretty well on the WD drives.
Of course, the other problem is if you strip out the proprietary stuff then there is no guarantee that the OS will even recognize the drive……..don’t know enough about how they’re set up tbh.

I might have a look at one of the old drives at some stage and see just what is necessary and what isn’t.

Ali Tait
19-02-2011, 19:59
Ok cheers, will do.

Ali Tait
19-02-2011, 20:02
Just Googled it and it would appear the drobo does it itself, so I'll leave it alone.

Welder
22-02-2011, 10:31
Errrm, well, it seems the problem mentioned in my original post was in fact my fault.:o:doh:
The simple fact is I fed the external hard drive too quickly.
In the past (and I suspect the software in the drives has changed) I manually copied each album to hard drive. If you have a few albums to do it gets a bit tedious so I wrote a bit of a script that sends the albums one after another track by track.
These new drives seem to transfer to a buffer and then burn to disc, defragmenting as they do it.
Basically if you have more than one album/multiple tracks in the buffer at a time the software doesn’t check what’s what, it just packs it.

As long as you transfer by folder for example, or wait for the bloody light to stop blinking on the hard drive before you send another file all goes well. :mental:

jantheman
22-02-2011, 11:35
John, whatever it is, it aint your fault. You can't, in your words, feed a drive too quickly.
Something isnt right as the system as a whole should be able to keep tabs on which file is which.
In simple terms, at the start of each block of data being transferred there should be a unique id which is there to ensure that the file gets to the right place and put back together correctly after its been copied. This, along with the checksum should guarantee data integrity.
I dont know whats going on here, you seem to think the buffer may be losing track but that simply shouldnt happen.
OK, you have found a way round the problem, but the problem is still there.

Welder
22-02-2011, 11:52
Hmm, that is pretty much what I thought Ray. I wondered if my script had anything to do with it but then again my script doesn’t go to the remote drive………….unless I’ve f****d up somewhere :eyebrows:
The software should run a sum check and it isn’t doing it right. Prolly failed its GCSE or something :lol:
Anyway, I’ve got it all backed up so if it suddenly throws all its dollies out of the pram I’ve got a free hand to catch them.
Its always the bloody software :steam:

WAD62
22-02-2011, 13:17
Interesting what you chaps say about Windows defragger. I've never defragged my music drives. What would you suggest that is free for W7 64 bit?

It's very unlikely that you'd ever need to defrag a purely music drive, you'd only ever get fragmentation on 'volatile' drives (lots of read write activity), or as they get over 70% full. ;)

Tim
22-02-2011, 13:26
It's very unlikely that you'd ever need to defrag a purely music drive, you'd only ever get fragmentation on 'volatile' drives (lots of read write activity), or as they get over 70% full. ;)
Agreed, defragging a music drive would not be needed, unless you are constantly deleting and writing to the drive.

However, if you want a 'windoze' defragger, I have been using Defraggler for years and like it. It's free too http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

Ali Tait
22-02-2011, 16:46
Thanks chaps, I found out the Drobo sorts itself anyway.