VF-16 Down...WTF ????

[Ginzoo]

Last night I was recording a great Jazz tune on my VF-16 and proudly played it back many times before calling it a night. Everything worked perfectly before shutting it down.
Tonight I fired it back up,excited to work on this new song. The only thing that is displayed is...

ABS= 00m 00s
Then just the track numbers listed at the bottom of the screen.

Nothing else works. No program info comes up. Will not let me make any selections. ALL OF MY SONGS ARE GONE.

Also the hard drive makes no sound at all now when I turn it on.

Any ideas from you guys ?

Thanks.

[Kramer]

You didnt happen to have it sitting near a Television did you?That can wipe it clean,but from the explanation you gave about the hardrive not making any sound at boot up,makes me think the hardrive died.....take it apart and see if the jumpers are still in place from the drive to the VF.........all I know is this has to suck!

[Ginzoo]

Hey Kramer, no it was not near a T.V. nor was it plugged in. I always unplug it when I am done recording for the night even though it is run through a surge protector. I am also assuming that lightning was not the reason either because the weather was fine.
This morning I took out the drive to see if the cables may have come loose. Eveything was fine and still did not work after a couple of times of booting it up.

I am going to take the drive to work in the morning and one of the I.T. guys is going to test it for me. Wish me luck. 1 and 1/2 years of songs/ ideas might be down the drain.

Lesson learned ; ...Back-up every chance you get.

[Kramer]

That truly sucks man.

I started backing my work up on a 1 gig jaz drive recently so that'll save me "some" heartbreak if I ever have a drive go bad.

Good luck!

[acorec]

Originally posted by Ginzoo
Last night I was recording a great Jazz tune on my VF-16 and proudly played it back many times before calling it a night. Everything worked perfectly before shutting it down.
Tonight I fired it back up,excited to work on this new song. The only thing that is displayed is...

ABS= 00m 00s
Then just the track numbers listed at the bottom of the screen.

Nothing else works. No program info comes up. Will not let me make any selections. ALL OF MY SONGS ARE GONE.

Also the hard drive makes no sound at all now when I turn it on.

Any ideas from you guys ?

Thanks.

Well, try this: Boot up the system and bang the hard drive sharply with the plastic end of a screwdriver. Usually, the bearings of the hard drive stick. I find that 99/100 times, this gets the drive going again. If the drive spins up, back up your data and find a new drive. You may have to hit i a few times.

[bdbdbucksKID]

I had a similar problem with my VF80...check out my post in this forum.

[bdbdbucksKID]

And if you never wanna see your data again...smack the hell out of the harddrive with the plastic end of a screwdriver...
Any jarring effect can send a harddrive into a tizzy...and you will get cluster and surface errors right and left until it finally just dies...
Your harddrive is and IDE drive, just like the one in your computer and it is just as fragile. Believe me, I speak from experience...I just had to replace my hard drive in my computer and got a lesson in backing up data and the fragility of hardware.
It may have worked for acorec...but, maybe acorec was lucky, ya know...not to bad you out acorec.

[shelfy]

Had exactly the same prob with the VF08 recently, warranty ended....the UK fostex distributors (SCV) were very helpful with advice via email and concluded first that it was a faulty unit, now they are sure its the hard drive, which they think needs replacing...£12 shipping, minimum£50 cost, £35 per hour labour cost, £12 return shipping...bugger.

I get the impression from here and sonicstate that this is not unusual and I'm reluctant to fork out the money for repair on an inherently unstable machine....I'm gonna try reformat or replace hard disk as explained in the manual. OK so I'll lose song data but its gotta be better than throwing money at an unstable piece of kit..damn, shoulda saved up for the Yamaha.

I'll let you know what appens.

[acorec]

Originally posted by bdbdbucksKID
And if you never wanna see your data again...smack the hell out of the harddrive with the plastic end of a screwdriver...
Any jarring effect can send a harddrive into a tizzy...and you will get cluster and surface errors right and left until it finally just dies...
Your harddrive is and IDE drive, just like the one in your computer and it is just as fragile. Believe me, I speak from experience...I just had to replace my hard drive in my computer and got a lesson in backing up data and the fragility of hardware.
It may have worked for acorec...but, maybe acorec was lucky, ya know...not to bad you out acorec.

We do it all the time. At work, we recover so many hard drives every week. Has never failed to work. Don't beat it silly, just rap sharply on the side of the case.

[Ginzoo]

shelfy, I am in the same frame of mind. I want to send the unit in to Fostex but I am not really happy with this machine and the fact that it is not compatible with mainstream computer hardware.
I have tried everything in the last few days to get it to recognize the hard drive again so I could reformat to no avail. It is just a lemon. I could waste a lot of money on it OR I can get the unit that I really want. That is a decision that I am trying to make right now.

acorec, I tapped it a few times ...nothing.My initial reaction was to smash the hard drive on the floor. Probably should have. I would still be in the same boat as I am now. Can't record anything and the ideas are flowing.

Decisions Decisions...

[shelfy]

Last night, as a sort of last resort, I followed the manual instructions on reformatting the hard disk...via the SET UP button and STANDARD re fromat, DISK Took about two hours to re format. But afterwards all the settings were like it was new out of the box and ready to go....YEAH, IT WORKS!

But what a pisser, Lost about 16 decent tunes and a load of ideas....I now have a recorder that works again, but have no idea why it suddenly crashed, therefore no idea if or when it will f**k up again.

I am connecting SCV for an answer, will let you know.

[Ginzoo]

shelfy, I just finished trying refomat in the same steps that you did...still nothing.

Good luck and keep me posted on what they say. Don't forget to back up every single note that you put in from now on.

[bdbdbucksKID]

sup, acorec:
You know, I might try it then....when my CDR tells me Not Rightable...I'll smack it lightly (like a redheaded stepchild)
My IT guy asserts that any jarring can F*ck it up, but if you are also speaking from experience, I can't argue with two schools of thought....I'm driftwood on this.
All I know is that I am constantly fearful of my Fostex giving me that "no disc" (aka IDE not CDR) reading again...so I have backed my crappy Masters that I submitted to copyright up, just in case...Only bummer is that you have to use an entire disk to back up one friggin song...so I gotta go buy like 200 blank disks...what a rip off!!! I would be nice if I could back up the WAV files for an entire collection on one disk to save space and disks.

[bdbdbuck]

You need to get those tracks into your computer and burn your CD from there.

bdbdad

[bdbdbucksKID]

The last couple of CD's I ran through that new software have really bit....I need to get n-track!!!!

[bdbdbuck]

You don't need editing software to burn your tracks. Just create files for your tracks and burn with your CD burn software. No need to use anything else.


bdbdad

[acorec]

Originally posted by bdbdbucksKID
sup, acorec:
You know, I might try it then....when my CDR tells me Not Rightable...I'll smack it lightly (like a redheaded stepchild)
My IT guy asserts that any jarring can F*ck it up, but if you are also speaking from experience, I can't argue with two schools of thought....I'm driftwood on this.
All I know is that I am constantly fearful of my Fostex giving me that "no disc" (aka IDE not CDR) reading again...so I have backed my crappy Masters that I submitted to copyright up, just in case...Only bummer is that you have to use an entire disk to back up one friggin song...so I gotta go buy like 200 blank disks...what a rip off!!! I would be nice if I could back up the WAV files for an entire collection on one disk to save space and disks.

OK, In the past, hard driveswould "park" their haeds wherever they would land when power was cut off. This would guarentee that the sectors that were "hit" by the head crashing would be wiped out. In modern drives, the head has a spring that forces the head th be pulled to the center of the drive on power down and sytem crashing situations. You will not harm a hard drive by rapping it on the side. The most common failure of modern drives is the bearing seizing. The drive will not spin up. In most instances, the rapping on the side will loosen the bearing enough to allow the platter to spin up. There are no parts that are subjected to failure because of the rapping. This is the first operation that is done by hard drive recovery services. You do not beat it silly, just a good stiff rap on the side. I used to work in Computing Services at a major university when I went to school there. I have recovered virtually all drives this way. If you still have a problem after trying this, check for hard drive spin-up on a computer. This will tell you if it is your drive. You may have lost the
one of the voltages required to run the drive.

[bdbdbucksKID]

I am a little behind the times in computer science...as you can clearly see.
What do you mean be voltages? Are we talking about pins, or actual electrical voltage?
I probably should save the time trying to figure it out for the pro's...but I'd like to know so I am not getting conned into five hours of labor when it could take five minutes!

[Ginzoo]

Originally posted by bdbdbucksKID
I am a little behind the times in computer science...as you can clearly see.
What do you mean be voltages? Are we talking about pins, or actual electrical voltage?
I probably should save the time trying to figure it out for the pro's...but I'd like to know so I am not getting conned into five hours of labor when it could take five minutes!

Hey, me too. I can test it with my voltimeter and see if that is the cause.

[bdbdbucksKID]

Well, everything seems to be back in order again...I had to call Fostex. I wrote all about my lovely experience in my post about the VF-80. I am crossing my fingers and hoping it doesn't have another tizzy.

[acorec]

Originally posted by Ginzoo
Hey, me too. I can test it with my voltimeter and see if that is the cause.

On the hard drive, there is a connector for power. It has +12,-12,+5 and gound. If your power supply to the hard drive crapped out, or if a pin in the connector is not making contact, the drive will not work. The fastest way to find out if the drive is good is to simply plug the drive into a computer. Power up the computer and feel/listen to hear if the drive spins up. If it does, there is something wrong with the Fostex, if it does'nt, the drive crapped out.

[Ginzoo]

I gave it to an I.T. guy at work to test for me today and that is what his first comment was. Hope it works.

This sucks. The muse is here and the ideas are flowing and no way to capture them.

[Kramer]

Have you tried to format a "new" drive in the machine yet?Hopefully it's just the drive gone bad and you can install a new one and be on your way.....hardrives are cheap these days....I know it sucks to lose the stuff on the old drive but the best case scenario is for the drive to be bad and NOT the Fostex.

[Ginzoo]

No. That is where my real problem lays. I have not used this machine lately and got behind on updating it. Fostex says the newer drives require the latest updates. So I guess I would have to buy one of the drives on the older list on their site which have less GB space.

The puter god still has the drive. He told me tonight that the it is f*cked but he is going to try and recover my music for me. He is really good at what he does so I,ll let him play with it for a while.

[Ginzoo]

Tonight I went out and tried to buy a new hard drive for this old thing. 40GB is now the industry standard. 20GB is all my unit with it's lack of updates can handle.

Do any of you have any links to hard drives{20 GB} that are compatible with the VF-16 ?????