[jhb1982Participant]

Is it really not possible for app developers to override auto update? It goes without saying that this is fair enough to A&H if they can’t control it, but if they can I don’t believe users can be reasonably expected to change settings to safeguard one app.

[jhb1982Participant]

Andreas – thanks. Re. cluster interleaving, that makes perfect sense. Wrt errors – well, in my case my mixer is usually setup next to my drums! The same thoughts crossed my mind, but I have observed errors being reported when not playing. A read/write test of every sector does not throw any issues, so I don’t think there’s been sustained mechanical damage (i.e. it doesn’t explain what’s happening under stable conditions).

The suggestion to switch to a non-mechanical drive makes sense. I guess the only issue is memory wear, but I gather most drives/sticks achieve upwards of a million P/E cycles these days?

Thanks for the tip Bob – I wasn’t sure about using a stick as most seem to lack the raw throughput, but reading around the SanDisk does appear to do the job. Worth a punt for 35 quid! Is this the exact model? (Getting paranoid now!)

[jhb1982Participant]

EDIT TO ABOVE:

The drive on the tested list IS the USB 3 variant, so I guess it ought to be removed.

In fairness the list is caveated that a particular drive may not work, but, is that because the QU is rather too sensitive, or are the HD manufacturers sometimes employing techniques that mess up real-time transfer? Either way, it doesn’t help us users much. It’s all a bit trial and error.

Now, if these are genuine errors, surely we need A&H to improve their drive validation process during formatting (or provide a PC utility if the mixer isn’t powerful enough to do it)?

[jhb1982Participant]

Interesting find Dick.

Yes, I remember those days! If I recall correctly though, in isolation of other factors, 5400 rpm should provide plenty of throughput for recording multiple channels of LPCM – 16 channels of 24 bit 48 kHz should certainly be well below the bottleneck imposed by the spin speed. SOS had a pretty good article on this a while back….
https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/pcnotes.htm

However, I guess it’s not inconceivable that something else has changed (as part of the move to lower rpm) on the latest version of this drive to cause issues. In which case, the approved drive list really needs updating (this is what I used to help decide my purchase in the first place) and unfortunately make and model doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll be ok!

Does anyone else have issues with transfer speeds copying their recordings to PC using a USB3 drive (i.e. getting only about 5 MB/s).

I can always relegate this drive to other purposes, but if I’m going to buy another I want to make sure the make/model and particular variant will be error free (and preferably allow me to copy my tracks at USB 3 speeds…)

Without wanting to hijack this read – can anyone recommend a drive they have bought recently that reports no errors and transfers A&H recorded files at a more tolerable rate?

[jhb1982Participant]

I’ve been seeing reports of errors during recording to my 500 GB Western Digital Elements drive (not right at the start of recording, but during recording). It tends to run into 10’s of errors over an hour or so, though it has run for up to four hours with no errors, so it is intermittent. This is even after a fresh format on the A&H.

These have been incidental recordings so far so I’ve not been too worried (yet), but I’m starting to wonder if this drive is really suitable, even though it is on the recommended list.

The drive is new (well, bought in July, but predominantly only used for this purpose).

Is there anything I can do ‘offline’ to determine if this is a drive error or something else? – would the normal read/write and smart tests be of any indication of what’s going on? The only thing that comes to mind is that I have to position the mixer next to my drums so it’s probably subjected to some level of vibration!

The other thing I’ve noticed – this is a USB 3 drive, but copying wav files produced by the QU to my PC it runs at about 5 MB/s! As an experiment I tried dumping another file on the same drive (same formatting etc.) and it was as expected – about 80 MB/s. So it something to do with the files themselves that causes really low transfer speeds.

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