Harddrive conflicts!Important problem!NEED HELP!

P

polaroid

New member
Hy!

I have the cubase 5(32VST), runing in a pentium II 400 Mhz, with 396Mb RAm, and one HD with 4Gb. My Hd was to small, so I put another with 20Gb. I have read in many audio setup helpers, that a second disk for audio recording is the best choice for me. So I bought it!

the problem:

For the test, i put a session with 20 chanels, 40 wav´s, with a perfect runing in my old HD.

So..., for a new test with the new HD, i paste the session with wav´s for that HD. A disaster!!!! Is like there is no enough buffer ...... many jumps when playing!

This isn´t right??? A second disk just for recording is the best choice, right?

I don t no how to manager this!!

Can you help me?

thanx

JH
 
Are there any other IDE devices on the same IDE controller / channel?
Also, check whether DMA is checked in Control Panel / system / device manager
 
IDE!!!

i have c: and d: sharing the same IDE(1), the first in master mode and the second in slave mode.

c: with the win system and all aplications (DMA on, 4Gb)

d: with the cubase sessions (DMA off, 20Gb)

IDE(2) is pluged to the cd-rw

Any sugestion??

thanx!

JH
 
Set your CD-RW to slave, and put it on the same ribbon as your C Drive.

Plug your other drive into the secondary channal and set it as master. Turn DMA on.
 
Emeric took the words right outa my mouth... :)

Also make sure you are using a 80 wire, 40 connector cable, not an old 40/40 IDE cable.
 
after change

the same problem!

Now i have

c: master in IDE 1

cd-r slave in IDE 1


d: master in IDE 2


There is any chance to resolve the problem in the bios setup? I have the ribbon cable (suppose is the 40/40) in the C:, and i run without problem the cubase session, so, i think the problem isn t related to the ribbon!

i Just don t know what to now!

Thanx!

Jh
 
What Brand/model is your second (new) hard drive?

If it is ATA 66 or 100, you NEED to use a 80 wire cable to get full performance out of it. Also make sure that the jumper setting for single drive is the same as master - on Maxtor drive its usually is, but on Western Digital for example it is not.
 
If you bought it recently, it is almost certainly an ATA-100 drive (many places have that drive on sale for $80), and it should have come with an 80 wire cable in its box, which you need to use - and the drive should be plugged into the END of the cable not the middle. Does your motherboard support ATA-66 or 100?
 
I suposse my motherboard support ata66, but i don t know cause it came to me in second hand!I don t have manuals!

Is there any chance to correct this problem with changing some pin´s in the motherboard......where i can t find a site with motherboards manuals?
 
Most motherboards support ATA100 on IDE channel 0. I just worked on an Intel motherboard today with the i815 chipset. The IDE ribbon connector on the motherboard is grey instead of black for channel 0.

Even if I didn't have ATA100 support, I would ALWAYS put my fastest HD on the first channel.
 
You tell me a big information!!! I was thinking that the two IDE´s had the same velocitie!

Im going to change the HD IDE, but can i run my win system from c: in IDE 2?Or i have to make a copy of all installed software to d: and next change the IDE to make it be the c:?
 
First of all, while using your fastest drive for C: is a good general rule, for YOUR purposes your want your D: drive to be the fastest. I'm assuming you are going to be actually recording with this drive. ATA-100 is a fast transfer rate, but if as I suspect this drive is only 5400 RPM that will be a limiting factor in your recording. Generally drives spinning at 7200 RPM work better for recording.

Second, most NEW motherboards have ATA-100 support but if your board is anything other than new this will not be the case. Most motherboard manufacturers have pretty good web sites, if you open up the PC there will be a manufactuer name & model number SOMEWHERE on the motherboard. Get that and you can then go on the web and find out what the board can do.

And yes, your Boot drive should be your C: drive, the master drive on your Primary IDE controller.
 
First of all, while using your fastest drive for C: is a good general rule, for YOUR purposes your want your D: drive to be the fastest. I'm assuming you are going to be actually recording with this drive. ATA-100 is a fast transfer rate, but if as I suspect this drive is only 5400 RPM that will be a limiting factor in your recording. Generally drives spinning at 7200 RPM work better for recording.

>Yes! And that is the strange thing! When i just had one disk (old 4Gb,now c:, in IDE1), my computer could play a cubase session with about 20 chanels,8ms latency , 600Mb of wave´s and with reverb plugins, all runing in real time, without cpu memory problems !

So, like i read before, i tryed to use this second disk(d: 20gb), just to record and play the audio tracks, like c:. To test, i put a copy of my c: cubase session in d:, and when i run it, the cpu exceed the memory, and "crash the sound".

I never expected this

-----------------------------------------
Second, most NEW motherboards have ATA-100 support but if your board is anything other than new this will not be the case. Most motherboard manufacturers have pretty good web sites, if you open up the PC there will be a manufactuer name & model number SOMEWHERE on the motherboard. Get that and you can then go on the web and find out what the board can do.

>For other reasons, i tryed to have some information about my motherboard, but i never get nothing. It´s strange, but it,s true.

look at this...

this is the information i get when i run the pc and when i opened the computer

In the restart screen it say

Top:

AWARD BIOS v4.51PG

midle:

ZP-6B Pentium II Motherboard Rev:4

bottom:

08/16/1998-i440BX-W977TF-2A69KGE9C-00


In the motherboard it is write ZP-6B v2.1


I don t know who made this motherboard!I don t have the manuals, and i can t find nothing about this!

There is a jumper set in the left of the IDE´s pluger, that i think it could change the bus frequencie and other features, but without manual, i can t risk burn my cpu! right?

----------------------------------------
And yes, your Boot drive should be your C: drive, the master drive on your Primary IDE controller.
------------------------------------

any sugetion´s to setup this computer?


Thanx for all

PLD
 
Polaroid - I did a search of some web sites last night (ASUS, Abit, etc.) looking for a motherboard with a designation of ZP-6B, but did not find anything.

However the BIOS message you quoted implies that this system is using a Intel 440BX chipset. If so, this dates the motherboard from 1-3 years old. As far as I know, none of the 440 motherboards support disk controllers past the ATA-33 standard.

Now IN THEROY you should be able to plug your new hard drive into this system, use an old drive cable, and have it work in ATA-33 mode - meaning it wont be running at full speed, but it should work. Thats what is suppoed to happen. However in my own experiance it doen'st always work this way. The first ATA-66 hard drive I bought for my DAW (a situation very similar to yours) refused to work at all with an older motherboard. I wound up returning the drive, thinking it was defective. The replacement did exactly the same thing. So I bought a newer motherboard with built-in ATA-66 controller and from then on the drive worked fine.

Unfortunately you may be in a similar situation - your new drive may just not be fully compatible with your motherboard. If so, your choice is to either get a new motherboard like I did, or get a seperate IDE Controller card. These are available from Promise, Maxtor, and others and cost less than a new motherboard. That might be the best route to go, because I would guess that you would need a new CPU and new RAM along with a new motherboard because of the age of the unit.

That's all I can come up with now, hope that helps.
 
As far as I know, none of the 440 motherboards support disk controllers past the ATA-33 standard.
Click to expand...

RWhite - just an FYI, the Abit BX133-RAID mobo (440BX chipset)has a built in Highpoint IDE controller that supports both DMA66 and DMA100 transfer rates. Don't know if there are any others out there, but probably not. This was a last gasp iteration of the 440BX.

Also, I did a Google search on ZP-6B and came up with a site that indicated this model number was associated with Award Software Vendor code GE. The GE code apparently is assigned to Globe Legate Co. Ltd. (Zaapa Mainboard). Don't know if you've ever heard of either of these. I haven't. The site was in Russian, so I couldn't glean much information from it.

Some further searching came up with : http://www.zaapa.com as the website for Globe Legate. However, I'm guessing they are out of business, as this web site is for something else at this time.
 
Dach - thanks for the info!

The 440 was a fine chipset, and I knew they were arround awhile, but didn't think anyone ever combined it with a newer IDE controller. That would probably be a good board for recording.
 
thanx for all your support!

Probably my only chance is to change the IDE´s of the HD´s!

Buy a new motherboard, at this time, is a very expensive option, cause i have to buy the other´s components, or buy a new computer!!!

I know that this is a very good motherboard, cause it works very fine with big memory usage Applications, like cubase recording!

I will search in other places for the manuals, cause i think i can tune it up for a best performance.

so....thank you very much for your help!

If you know something new about this problem...i will wait for a sugestion!

PLD
 
Hi

There's only one thing I can think of, and that's the second HD is a little too much for the system. The 440 is a really good chipset, unfortunately it may be asking too much of it to support two hard disks, specially in light of the fact that Windows accesses the system disk regularly. I think the IDE controller would be overloaded.

One thing you might try is switching virtual memory off, or at least fixing the swap file size (permanent Swap File). This will at least stop disk swapping while you're recording/playing from the disk, reducing a bit of bandwidth requirement from the IDE controller.

We have a large installed base of old (386/486 onwards) systems which do not support the latest hardware in this country. To circumvent this, there are some companies that make add-on cards which add say, USB and ATA 66/100 support to old computers.

These are usually PCI cards, which are economical and easily installed, and will be able to support your new drive without many hiccups. I think the name of the company is Volcano. If you want to buy one of these ATA cards, it would help you even later as it would add the capability to have four additional ATA drives on a new system.

Don't touch the mobo jumpers. They have nothing to offer for inexperienced users. You might want to get into BIOS and tweak that up a bit, for a slight performance increase. Try turning DMA on the IDE channels OFF for a change. See if that works.

Sang
 
The 440 chipset has no problem supporting 2 hard disks (or 4 for that matter). Its just that the IDE controller typically found on these boards is pre - ATA-66, so figuratively you are right, any ATA-100 drive is "too much" for the system.

And as I said, a seperate ATA-100 controller card might resolve the issue. The Promise card goers for about $40, Maxtor's (which is exactly the same card, made for Maxtor by Promise) can sometimes be found on sale cheaper.
 
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