Signs of a bad hard disc?

  • Thread starter Thread starter rockabilly1955
  • Start date Start date
R

rockabilly1955

New member
Just wondering if any of you guys that use a hard disc recorder know the signs of a possible hard drive failure? I use a korg d888 as our recorder then transfer to pc. I just noticed from a quick session today that the vocal track seems really glitchy in parts throughout the track. It sounds almost like when you speed up a track and you hear that wobble sound. Or like a bad pitch correction tool? Its not too bad but is noticeable if you really pay attention to the track alone. Our vocalist doesn't have the greatest technique but this is totally something mechanical. Its never done this before. Could it be a hard drive problem in the recorder? Thanks guys
 
rockabilly1955 said:
Just wondering if any of you guys that use a hard disc recorder know the signs of a possible hard drive failure? I use a korg d888 as our recorder then transfer to pc. I just noticed from a quick session today that the vocal track seems really glitchy in parts throughout the track. It sounds almost like when you speed up a track and you hear that wobble sound. Or like a bad pitch correction tool? Its not too bad but is noticeable if you really pay attention to the track alone. Our vocalist doesn't have the greatest technique but this is totally something mechanical. Its never done this before. Could it be a hard drive problem in the recorder? Thanks guys
Click to expand...

Could be the drive returning a "soft error" (a correctable error). It might be caused by overheating (thermal recalibration) or it might be caused by actual problems with the drive (CRC errors caused by stray magnetism, failing head, leaky bearing grease corrupting the media and heads, slow spindle speed due to failing bearings, etc.). Hard to say.

I'd back up all your projects to CD, then defragment the drive and see if the problem goes away. If not, swap out the drive and restore the project from those CD backups.
 
Now that you mention it..... The tracks that sound a bit glitchy are the final 2 songs we recorded in our session after about 2 hrs. It might have heated up a bit? Good thing I do back up everything right away.
 
rockabilly1955 said:
Now that you mention it..... The tracks that sound a bit glitchy are the final 2 songs we recorded in our session after about 2 hrs. It might have heated up a bit? Good thing I do back up everything right away.
Click to expand...

Or it might just be that there are bad blocks near the end of the disk. Try a full backup and reformat and see if the problem goes away. That should remap out any bad blocks, I would think. (Note: I've never used a stand-alone recorder; I'm guessing here based on what a computer would do.)
 
It could also be heavily fragmented, which affects drive performance. Does the D880 have a defrag utility?
 
I don't think it has a defrag function but I will check the manual. Out of the 40 gigs on it i've only used about 5 gigs. I only use it like once a month when we have a full band recording session.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top