vf160 - disaster strikes!

G

glynb

Balladeer
Something weird happening with my vf160 yesterday.

The other day I burned an audio CD of a coupla mixdowns. I was listening to them in the car and about half way through some of the mixes another totaly different song, from a completely different program, appears on one of the setereo channels for a few seconds!

So I thought maybe this was a glitch on just those particular mixdowns, but last night after tracking i went back to check a previously recoreded song and a completely different section of a track from another song randomly appears on it!

it's very annoying because it wiped over a section of an instrument by a friend who is abroad and i can't get it re-recorded, of course I hadn't backed it up previously (which is unusual for me)!

I have had this unit now for two years, so I'm thinking perhaps the disk may need re-formatting and tidying up. I'm thinking that the Fostex equivalent of the file allocation table has become corrupted and it is mistaken about which blocks of material go where? So a format should sort it out? Hope so, and that there's nothing more serious wrong with this unit.

I must add i took it abroad in an aircraft and although i kept the machine with me and it didn't get bashed or knocked maybe the x-ray scanner thing has affected the drive? Though it's only like a laptop disk so why?

I keep telling people how rock solid this thing is and has been for 2 years, but now I'm not so sure. It's pretty serious if things you recorded are being randomly replaced with other sections from other songs, I can't trust this unit with my work in its current condition and I'm now paranoid that if i record something new it might be destroying material in other programs! So no new recording for now.

I'll reformat at the weekend and hope that sorts it out.

I think the problems occured because i keep hitting the disk full mark half way through recording and that can't be good for the disk I guess, it's a pity it doesn't warn you when disk space is very low!

Getting all my old songs archived off, in whatever state they are now, will be a good thing anyway, but I don't like the thought of relying on backups only as I already lost one song through relying on a backup on a CDRW which was corrupt when i really needed it!

Anyone had similar problems?
 
glynb said:
I think the problems occured because i keep hitting the disk full mark half way through recording and that can't be good for the disk I guess, it's a pity it doesn't warn you when disk space is very low!Anyone had similar problems?
Click to expand...

What you're describing is not good at all, and I wonder if it's happening, as you think it may be, because of the full disk... I've never heard of this happening before, as you'd expect to if it was a likely issue. Isn't there a way to check space on the disk via the SETUP menu? Anyway, sorry you're haviong to deal with this. Frankly, instead of a reformat, I'd back-up and get a new drive. There seem to be a number of compatible, quiet Maxtors, and I know the Japanese site advertises the VF160 with an 80gig drive.
 
Well I've hit the disk full mark on several occasions in the past without this particular problem occuring.

I hvae had another issue when it has produced and abosrted mix-down and when i try to delete the mixdown the machine freezes with an error64 message and it game over, time to reboot.

Yeh, if the reformat doesn't work then I'll look into a replacement hard disk.

But this time I intend to be disciplined and have no more than say 6 or so songs on the machine at once, backup and remove will be my watchword form now on!
 
glynb said:
I hvae had another issue when it has produced and abosrted mix-down and when i try to delete the mixdown the machine freezes with an error64 message and it game over, time to reboot.
Click to expand...

On the other VF site you're on, somebody once posted a list of the error codes. It sounds like your machine has had something brewing in it before this latest thing. I've had about 65+ programs on my machine for a while now with no error messages or mixdown issues ever. Most of these are :60 second commercials, but one is a 17 minute piece (with all 16 tracks going), plus the mixdown...

I guess my point is, I wonder if your HardDrive has issues (bad sectors, perchance) that are avoidable with smaller files and less capacity, but unavoidable with a bigger file in play. Sorry for the guessing, if it sounds ridiculous, I'm just trying to hypothesize. I would try to get the error message decoded. It may tell a big part of the story.
 
Sounds bad. I think any hard disk based machine is going to require occasional 'tidying up' of the disk. On a computer this would involve a defrag. There is no equivalent on the VF, so an occasional quick format is probably the next best thing. I think running a VF close to disk full is bound to cause problems, bearing in mind it needs space to create temporary files, such as for Undo.
You can find the error codes in my Fostex folder:
http://home.ripway.com/2004-10/186213/Fostex/

Good luck

Orc
 
The latest...

Thanks all for your responses.
I checked the error codes. The one i was getting when trying to delete certain programs was Error 64 "remake free block. There was an overlapping section in program management region", which to me sounds like the Fostex equivalent of MS file allocation table error?

On Saturday i went thruogh backing up all my songs to CDRW and then deleting them from the disk. There were about 10 which would not delete due to error 64, but i noticed if i pressed 'Yes' button and waited the Vf seemed to continue to try to delete. Sometimes i had to press 'yes' several times. Then either it would delete, or I'd gewt another error message , which is "error61:There was improper access to the program management section".

A few more pressess of the 'yes' buttton would result in a completed deletion, apparently. But given the mixed up bits of songs problem appearing here and there I couldn't really trust it. Definitely something seriously wrong. So i went ahead with the disk format. I think this took about 5 hours or so, I went to bed. Next morning the format had completed with a reassuring 'no bad sectors' message, nice to see!

So I restored a song, no problem. I also set about recording a new song, with no problems thus far, so fingers crossed that a format has sorted the problem out?

I guess the moral of the story is not to let your disk become full, always keep an eye on the disk usage and free space via the setup menu and delete programs before you hit breaking point!

Great to have my vf back though, it was like losing a friend!
 
That's great to hear, especially from my standpoint of someone who has been eyeballing the VF160 for some time...

I'm going to have to make do with the MR8 for a while though, in light of recent "work reduction" at my place of employment. But the economy is getting better.... right...? :confused: :rolleyes:

All bitterness aside, and financial woes, very good to hear... :D :)

carelessorc said:
I think running a VF close to disk full is bound to cause problems, bearing in mind it needs space to create temporary files, such as for Undo.
Orc
Click to expand...

That certainly makes sense....
 
Well, so far so good. Done several recordings and restored a few songs. No probs.

Guess the format sorted it all out, I will make sure i don't run the VF with a nearly full disk in future!
 
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