USB Stick Woes

[JohnOC]

Hi,

We have a trusty QU16 which recently has been playing up with USB stick write issues.
The USB sticks are all San-Disk 16GB Cruzer Glide.

All are formatted as FAT32 with 32k block size.

However, only one of them actually works.

The rest behave as follows:
1. Insert drive – drive is read.
2. Arm for recording and Qu says “Arming” for ages.

If I alternatively try and format the drive, it stays at formatting 0% forever.

I’ve tried re-initializing the drives and checking them for errors but am not seeing any errors.

Suggestions appreciated.

Thanks – John

[volounteer]

@JohnOC

usb sticks are all different and most of them are very touchy on the Qu
actually now some of them are touchy on win XP as well as win 10 although different problems with each opsys

you could try what I did and succeeded first time which aamazed me
get a usb adapter that goes from SD card to usb memory stick (I recall it was 10-20usd for the adapter. SD depends on size/speed)
get a good fast memory SD card
use them together as a surrogate usb memory stick

should be no more expensive to test than more usb memory sticks
and the adapter will be useful in the future as well as being able to use the SD card elsewhere if the Qu is still unhappy

alternatively
and this is not sure as we do not know any details of how AH does their usb2 ‘compatible’ stuff
but you could try to fix your usb memory sticks in a PC and run all memory tests you can after you fix and defrag reformat etc.
possibly there is something meaningless in the usb memory hardware that somehow hangs up the AH formatting or recognizing the usb drive
I have had many fail in the Qu but they work fine in a PC

[JohnOC]

Thanks for the fast reply.

Looking at your “alternatively”….
I’ve tried all sorts of things on my PC (Win-10) including Diskpart to clean them and re-create the partitions etc. etc.
Have come to a similar conclusion to you.

Back-story – I use them to record our morning service for later push up onto a telephone service (yes – ancient tech but we have a group in church that appreciates this and still use landlines 🙂 ).
I used to give the operator a bag of sticks to save trips, but he recently reported to me that only a few sticks were working.

[volounteer]

my experience is that win10 is bad news in so many ways that I refuse to use it any more
(I may have to, someday, but I will clean out the crap and fix all the screwy options first.
[I have a 6 page list of fixes needed]) but that is a lot of work so I procrastinate hoping to get ubuntu instead:)
win 10 destroyed a usb memory stick that had worked on my xp and I used it for a sneakernet transfer
previously it destroyed my usb adapter and took a day to reset all the meshuganah options on power saving and controller for usb
the stick it messed up still works (I think) on win 10 but totally effeddupp and will not work on XP or anything else like the Qu

I would suggest you find a win7 or earlier machine like XP to clean up the drive and format it (probably later than 98SE though)
[Although vista could be iffy too. never used that version]
also get only usb2 drives if you buy more

seriously consider the usb-SD adapter with an SD card.
one adapter
your operator can use the rest of the SDs in it to record the service for phone use
but do try it once before buying lots of SD cards!

pls tell us more about the phones and how you use them
I have no idea how you could be using landlines that way now.
closest I have seen is a church that records just the audio of the sermon and puts an mp3 on itunes to download.

[JohnOC]

Hmm – fraid I’ve been on win-10 for ages and up to now haven’t had issues.
I do have an Ubuntu desktop beside me as well so might give that a whirl – I think you can FAT32 format on it (with a bit of persuasion)

We use twilio.com to serve an MP3 file out.
This is quite a sophisticate call handling service, but its become popular for churches in the UK since the pandemic started to serve out services.
We just do a simple play script that is updated each Sunday.

[JohnOC]

@Keith – wondering are you able to help here?

So – I tried formatting the drive using Ubuntu and on the SQ7.
Neither solution worked, so in the end I bought some new Kingston Data travellers, formatted them on the Qu and they are working fine for the moment.

It looks to me like the firmware in the Qu may just a bit intolerant on variations on the drive.
I noticed the last Firmware update had fixes for USB Enumeration and wonder is there a bit more that could be done to improve its robustness.

Also – can anything be done about the anti-windows troll or is that just a fact of life?

[KeithJ A&H]

@JohnOC

I’m afraid I can only reiterate what has been discussed throughout the ‘sticky’ Qu-Drive compatibility thread ( https://community.allen-heath.com/forums/topic/qu-drive-compatible-usb-device-database ).

The main points being:

• Qu-Drive and SQ-Drive use a hardware (chip) solution for communication with USB devices. This is different to a computer (using software/drivers) and some chipsets used in the USB devices are incompatible on a hardware level. The firmware update that you mention was the result of a lot of development work, mainly to get USB devices that were on the edge of compatibility to work for data storage even where they were unsuitable for audio recording/playback (which we always recommend using an external drive for anyway). As I understand it, there is no more that can be changed/improved in firmware.
• It’s not possible for us to recommend devices with any guarantee they will work, as manufacturers change the chipsets used in them without changing the model name/specs, meaning two seemingly identical devices will have different levels of functionality (as it sounds like the case might be with the Cruzer Glides you mention).
• It’s not necessarily the fastest spec’d or most expensive drives which are the most suitable for use as Qu or SQ Drives. This is important for audio recording/playback, but the compatibility is just to do with the how the hardware’s communicating, not how fast this is happening.
• The community here have very generously submitted their experiences with different devices using the form here – https://www.allen-heath.com/usbdeviceform – the results of which can be viewed here – https://www.allen-heath.com/usbdevicelist – and this is by far the best guide when looking for a suitable device.

Hope this explains it a little better.
Keith.

[JohnOC]

Keith,

Thanks for the detailed reply – hopefully the new set of sticks will work a bit better.
The interesting thing I would say though is that the SQ seems to be a bit more tolerant than the Qu (based on our two consoles).

[Mike C]

For what it’s worth I never had the Sans Disk Cruzers work either.

From day one (about six years) the Kingston Data Traveler series USB drives have worked in every QU, SQ and the couple of GLD’s I have worked with.
That includes six year old drives and new ones purchased over the years.

The few Transend Jet Flash drives I have tried also work.

If you need a lot of storage Sans Disk has these that work well, couple friends
of mine use them for multitrack recording.
Sans Disk 500gb Extreme

[Author]

Posts