VS 840ex disk Problem

R

ronanb

New member
hello ,
i recently purchased a second hand Roland vs840ex in mint condition . its been working great but i've encountered one problem . i'm still only recording my 1st song on the system yet its telling me that the disk memory is full ! it says in the manual that the 250mb disk can hold 200 songs so i can't understand why this message is appearing . i purchased the correct disk (250mb zip disk) and i erased any unwanted virtual tracks to free up any space but it still won't record . is this a disk problem or a unit problem ? maybe there is a simple solution if anyone out there can help me .

thanks in advance ,

RB.
 
DISK PROBLEMS

This is just a guess. try formating the disk with the roland format feature and then initialize it. This will clear all the previous information (partition table may be jazzed). Hope this helps.
 
Formatting is not going to help you recover more space on this disk, which already contains the song in progress. You did the right thing by deleting unneeded virtual tracks. While the disk operating system allows you to create up to 200 songs per disk, if you tried this, you'd be limited to about 2 seconds of audio per song. So this feature (just like the 999 levels of undo) is pretty worthless. You're limited to 250megs of recorded material. When I was multi-tracking with my VS840ex, I was putting only one song on each 250meg disk, and I was still running out of space. I have no idea how people are getting by with 100meg disks on the BR-8's.

Anyway, if you've deleted uncessary tracks and still don't have enough space... the next thing to do is "optimise" your disk. This process clears out the undo buffer to free additional disk space. If you optimize your disk, you'll no longer be able to undo past changes. There is another option called "futher optimize" which compresses the data even more, but I would strongly caution against "optimise futher" because it can destroy your song and render it unplayable.

If you've deleted tracks and optimized and you're still out of space, you may need to use a lower fidelity recording mode... i.e., MT2, LV1 or LV2 to conserve disk space.
 
Partition size change

This may be a shot in the dark but here goes. Try changing drives in the drive select area of the roland from disk "0" to disk "1" or vice versa. Your hard drive "0" may be partitioned to a small size. Each partition on the hard drive acts like another drive, thus you may need to repartition the drive. Hope this cures the problem.

Doc
 
I agree, 100m was never enough. You might get one and a partial song on there. 250mb might do for 1 to 2 songs, depending on complexity. These drives are a joke to me!

To make these units useful, here's an idea from us VS Planeteers.... pull the Zip and install a 2.5" IDE Laptop drive..up to 2GB in size. Many of us at www.vsplanet.com have done this with great success. The Zip is just a standard IDE interface. I installed a drive I received after upgrading a laptop. It's a 810mb drive. It gives me up to 408 minutes of recording time. I've recorded as much as 1 1/2 hours on it without failure.

Next, backup becomes an issue. I use mine with my computer running Sonar and my Pro Audio card is a Frontier Designs Dakota. I attach the VS-840 to the Dakota via the Digital Coax connector (S/PDIF) and the Dakota card. I sync 2 tracks at a time into Sonar, thus allowing me to do all of my mixing there.

Jimy at the www.VSPlanet.com forum has some other ideas for those who want removability. That will take some manufacturing skills, though.
 
Hey tntkemp - why the "up to 2 GB" limitation? why not get a much roomier drive? my BR-8 has been behaving increasingly erratically lately - I get Disk Full when there is no way the disk can be full. As we speak, I have 2 songs set to LV2 but with no recorded content in either of them, and yet: Disk Full. But I can pop that one out, stick in a different disk and record a 3-minute song song with 8 tracks worth of data and no space problem! Though sometimes the problem doesn't occur, it has occurred on numerous different disks, so I believe it to be an issue on the BR-8 device, not the disks. Like there is some setting that is not set right, or perhaps just malfunctioning after so many years (I've been using it for about 13 years now--yeah, lucky 13). Thanks for any further advice!
 
Wish said:
Uh....you are responding to a thread that is 15 years old.
Click to expand...

Yes, really old...has it been 15 years? OMG...but I'll respond, nonetheless!

2GB was the most I and many others before me found that the VS840EX would read and write. Actually, the number, if memory serves, was 2.1GB. It is old hardware, after all, so it's not that surprising. 2GB drives were unheard of when these came out.

We were using 2.5" IDE laptop drives at first, then some experimented with flash memory drives and found one or two that would work. It's all over on VSPlanet.com, buried in the threads. I don't know about the BR8, though.
 
BR-8 disk full problem

Wish said:
Uh....you are responding to a thread that is 15 years old.
Click to expand...

Holy crap, I didn't notice the date on the post! That's hilarious. Anyway, I've been using this BR-8 a long time, usually always served me well, but lately not so much. I'm thinking of upgrading to the Tascam DP-24SD ... anyone have anything to say about those? Good, bad or ugly?
 
I would suggest starting a new post for a question like that. Chances are nobody that has used one will look at this ancient post.


doug5574 said:
Holy crap, I didn't notice the date on the post! That's hilarious. Anyway, I've been using this BR-8 a long time, usually always served me well, but lately not so much. I'm thinking of upgrading to the Tascam DP-24SD ... anyone have anything to say about those? Good, bad or ugly?
Click to expand...
 
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