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[kevced]

Lost of communication between JR and external hard drive?

I have bought the update version MC16 when reinstalling MC on my computer (Windows XP) and I now have serious issues. On a regular basis, I lost the communication between MC and one of my external drives. I have a Seagate hard drive where all my classical music is stored and a Western Digital (WD) where the jazz files are stored. The problem is always between the WD and MC16.

After booting, I can see that both drives are available and I can select via MC16 any album from both drives. But, if I listen to one complet album located on the Seagate, the WD drive will become unavailable and the error saying that MC16 was unable to play any of the selected files will appear. Even though I made sure that the WD drive was available just before the request for an album located on this drive. Once I received the error message, I switched back to Windows and the WD drive has disappeared of the list of available components...

For the past 3 weeks, only the WD drive was used without any problems. The issue appears with the addition of a second drive.

I made the following verifications:

- all USB ports
- e-sata port used by the WD drive
- the cables
- as suggested on some forums, I deselected a field related to the cache on the WD drive properties. Before this modification, I used to lost the communication with this drive on a very regular basis and it was only external drive connected to the laptop)
- no timer is programmed to shut down the hard drives after a certain period of time

Is it a known bug? Any suggestions?

PS: sorry for my English...

[JimH]

I'm not aware of a similar problem.  I don't have any idea of a solution.  Sorry.

If you can't see the drive from Windows, MC will never see it.

Did you try updating firmware on the WD?

[kevced]

Thank you,

That's an option...but I have limited skill with computers and I am afraid of causing irremediable new problems!

Regards.

[Alex B]

I wonder if this could be a problem with recovering the drive from a power saving state. The drive may have internal power saving features even though the Windows power scheme is not set to turn off hard disks. I had problems with an eSATA drive dock (using an Asus/AMD mobo & XP). I use the dock now only through USB2 (slower, but reliable).

[kevced]

Unfortunately...I don't think so...

I had the same problem when connected through USB. Tonight, I will try to determine if MC16 is part of the problem or not: after booting, I will not open MC16 and check after 2-3 hours if Windows still see the drive. If so, I will try to play an album via MC16 and see what will happen...

Thank you for your help!

[JimH]

Unfortunately...I don't think so...

I had the same problem when connected through USB. Tonight, I will try to determine if MC16 is part of the problem or not: after booting, I will not open MC16 and check after 2-3 hours if Windows still see the drive.

That may not find the problem.  The drive may be having trouble only after a lot of I/O.

I'm pretty certain this is a drive/driver problem.

[JimH]

That's an option...but I have limited skill with computers and I am afraid of causing irremediable new problems!

Firmware updates are pretty simple to do, and in this case, you've got a drive that isn't working so you don't have much to lose.

[kevced]

Thank you...much appreciated!


You are probably right...

One last question: I use the same computer at home and at the office. 2 external hard drives are used at each location. Is it possible to install MC16 and MC15 on the same laptop? If yes, I could have 2 different setups and I would avoid to switch from different libraries (default), different DAC...

[JimH]

MC15 and MC16 can be installed and used on the same PC.  But they can't share a library.

Zones would let you switch between two DAC's.

[kevced]

Cool...So I understand that I can have MC16 sets for my Ayre DAC at home with one library (2 hard drives) and MC15 sets for the sound card used by the laptop with a different library (using two other hard drives +/- a copy 2 of the ones I have at home)?

All that on the same PC. That's great!

Thank you again.