1 Topic by neirbod (edited by neirbod 2012-02-02 17:05:43)

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Topic: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Hello,

I have used the DUSB function on my UFX successfully for some location classical work, recording 4-8 channels onto a memory stick.  I find the stick is reliable for up to 12 channels.  I just bought a 500 GB Seagate external drive (5400 RPM) to use on sessions where I may need more channels than the memory stick can reliably handle.  This drive is not working as well as I had hoped, so I wanted to see if others have similar experiences.

The manual states:
"To determine the maximum channel count of a medium, activate all 34 channels at a sample rate of 96 kHz...Most hard drives manage an error-free recording until the drive is full."

Based on this statement, and the feedback from posters here, I thought I would have no trouble recording 34 channels at 96 kHz.  I was therefore surprised when I ran some test recordings and had numerous errors. I tried decreasing the track count to 30 and still have errors.  The HD utilization meter is showing a steady 70-71%, which seems fine. 

One interesting part of this is that errors come in groups of 3 and at somewhat regular intervals.  In my latest test, I had 0 errors for 7 minutes, and then 3 all at once.  It ran with no additional errors until around 16 minutes, then jumped to 6 errors.  At the 23 minute mark I got 3 more errors.

Has anyone else had this problem with an external hard drive?  Is there something else I need to do to optimize the hard drive performance?

My system info is:
Windows 7
Driver version 1.019
Firmware version 351

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

No known issues... What kind of drive is this exactly? Was it pre-formatted to FAT32?


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

3 Reply by neirbod (edited by neirbod 2012-02-02 19:37:52)

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

It is the Seagate Expansion 500GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6822148409

It was preformatted to NTFS, so I used HP USB Storage Disk Formatter 2.2.3 to reformat to Fat 32

I am running a disk check right now to see if it finds any issues, but since the drive is brand new and I just formatted it I doubt this is the case.

Thanks for your help.

EDIT - Check disk found no errors

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Update - I tried just 22 channels and got one error after 15 minutes.  Max HD never exceeded 55%.  Seems like this drive is just not suitable, but I have no idea why.  Any ideas?

5 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • Registered: 2007-04-06
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Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Might need too much power/current. Hard to imagine a hard drive being that slow...but who kows, might be thai water in the housing... DeadHorse

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

6 Reply by neirbod (edited by neirbod 2012-02-06 22:31:24)

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

So, after my previous drive resulted in errors I picked up another external hard drive, a Toshiba Canvio 500GB.  I was unpleasantly surprised to have the same problem, even worse in fact.  34 channels at 96 kHz resulted in numerous errors immediately.  Using just 22 tracks it worked for about 3 minutes before I got my first error.

I know RME can't check every drive, but I am now 0 for 2 attempts.  Can RME or anyone else tell me a *proven* drive that can handle this?  I only saw one posting where someone did this successfully, but the drive is no longer manufactured.

RME, there must be some other aspect of these drives that is a factor.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

I still can't imagine any current drive actually being too slow... Have you tried different cables? Have you tried testing at which channel count the trouble starts?

I have an external Iomega drive here with a Seagate ST950032 5AS inside, which works perfectly well...


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

I tried two cables for the Seagate drive with no improvement.  The Toshiba drive has a proprietary USB cable so I can't swap it out.  I did not test exactly how many tracks are possible with no errors, but for both drives I tried all inputs only (22 channels) and got errors within 8 minutes.  Given I have tried two brand new drives from two respected manufacturers with no luck, I think RME may have to reconsider its thinking that any current drive is sufficient.

Thanks for the info on a working drive. I will try to get the same one.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

I think it would be important to find out whether lower track counts will work without problems. You could test the drives for audio performance on the PC, e.g. with dskbench.exe

I would certainly maintain that there are no "too slow" drives nowadays. The extenal USB drive case may be part of the issue, although it normally should not interfere.

Is the drive empty or is there a lot of fragmented other data on it?


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

I will try lower track counts and report back.  Both drives were brand new and I formatted them to FAT 32.  So, there are no data on either other than the UFX files.

11 Reply by neirbod (edited by neirbod 2012-02-09 15:20:40)

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Ok, I have an update.

First, I tried a third drive, a LaCie Porsche Design 500 GB with a Seagate ST950032 5AS inside (the same one RME support uses and has no problem with).  I did a 32 track recording at 96 kHz, HD usage hovered around 78%.  Came back 5 hours later to find 33 errors.  The drive was not even close to full.

Test #2 with the LaCie drive - 18 tracks.  Let it run 90 minutes with no errors

Test #3 with LaCie drive - 26 tracks - Let t run 90 minutes with 1 error.

Given my results with three different drives I cannot believe I am just getting unlucky with hard drives.  It could be my UFX is in need of repair, but it behaves well at lower track counts.  If there were other users saying they had success with all 34 channels at 96 kHz I would begin thinking of sending my unit in for repair.  However, I have seen only one user claim such success, but it was not clear how long he ran his test.  I think a test needs to be at least one hour long, and preferably several hours long, to be meaningful.

Is it possible that the 34 track maximum at 96 kHz is only *rarely* possible and with only the best hard drives?  Perhaps track counts around 20 is all that most users can expect reliably.  RME, or anyone else, I welcome any additional thoughts or ideas you may have.

  • bsfreq
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Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Just wondering.. did you do a quick format or full format for those disks.
I remember having trouble formatting my drive correctly. Also (if I remember correctly), I couldn't format the drive from os x.
Somehow the os x made the fat32 partition inside the existing NTFS partition or something like that.
Had to use windows and proper software to first totally remove the NTFS partition, and then fully format again with FAT32. Just can't recall the name of the software. Might have been the easeus partition master mentioned here on post#60 -  http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic … 64&p=2

But maybe this is not the problem, when afterall your UFX can read and write to those disks..

Fireface UFX+ | Fireface UFX | Babyface Pro | 12Mic
  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

bsfreq wrote:

Just wondering.. did you do a quick format or full format for those disks...But maybe this is not the problem, when afterall your UFX can read and write to those disks..

I did a full format using HP USB Storage Disk Formatter 2.2.3 to reformat to Fat 32.  I was wondering if it could be a formatting issue, but I believe in that case it would not work at all.  In my case it works fine at lower track counts, it just gets error-prone somewhere above 20-22 tracks.

One interesting thing that may be a clue - my 500 GB drive is showing only 465 GB in both windows and the UFX.  Not sure if that is relevant or not.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

465 GB is normal...

I'll do another test with my Iomega drive for you...


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

RME Support wrote:

465 GB is normal...

I'll do another test with my Iomega drive for you...


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Thank you, Daniel

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

RME Support wrote:

465 GB is normal...

I'll do another test with my Iomega drive for you...


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Hi Daniel,

Have you had a chance to retest your drive?  I remain very curious about this.  Thank you.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Sorry, not yet... Sometime next week maybe...


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

RME Support wrote:

Sorry, not yet... Sometime next week maybe...

Hi Daniel,

Anything to report?

Thanks.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Sorry, been a busy week. Setting this up now, will report back.


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Got 4 errors after about 30 minutes at 34 channels/96k - but the drive is not full and possibly fragmented. HD usage around 80%.

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

RME Support wrote:

Got 4 errors after about 30 minutes at 34 channels/96k - but the drive is not full and possibly fragmented. HD usage around 80%.

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for checking.  This is consistent with what I found for better drives. 

This is obviously not consistent with what RME has posted numerous times in different ways - that any modern drive at 5400 RPM or higher should be more than adequate for this task.   Is it possible a firmware update could improve performance?  Or perhaps a 7200 drive is required?  I believe other users would appreciate updated guidance from R'ME on how to get the best results from DUSB.

Thanks

22 Reply by MC

  • MC
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Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

34 channels at 96 is indeed a critical border. But this border is like an edge - if Daniel got 4 errors after 30 minutes, then with 2 channels less (32) he would have got zero errors. This is lightyears away from your '20-22' channels, which I can get even with a USB stick. Therefore your assumption that your unit's front USB port is not giving full performance might be right.

Checking this will be quite time consuming as most probably the developers themselve will have to do that. And that means sending the unit to Germany.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

Before you send the unit in, I would suggest to do some long-term testing with channel counts and sample rates that resemble those you use in real-world applications. If you do classical location work, you are hardly likely to record all (if any) playback channels. Maybe one par for a downmix...
If you can repeatedly run recordings overnight using as many inputs as you may require (or even all of them), then you should be reasonably safe... While it does matter more on pen drives, keeping the disk defragmented certainly won't do any harm with high track counts.


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • From: Washington DC, USA
  • Registered: 2007-08-06
  • Posts: 442

Re: DUSB - hard drive not working as well as expected

There is another UFX user in my area.  He agreed to help me run the same tests using his unit to see if the results are similar or not.  I/we will report back.  This may not happen for a few weeks.

For the record, I have used the USB recording at smaller track counts (4-8 channels) many times for many hours with no errors.  This is all  typically need as I mostly do location classical work.  However, occasionally I may need to use all 34 channels which is why I am testing this.