Hard Disk Failure with DL32R

, , 4

At our Outpost gig last weekend, I noticed at the end of the first set that the red recording light was off in the Master Fader control app for our DL32R mixer.

I know that I started the recording before the first set!  Did I bump it accidentally during the set?

So, I restarted the recording at the beginning of the second set, and the red light was still on after midnight when we finished…

However, when I loaded up the files into Logic to have a listen, they were garbled and glitchy. Here’s an example of what it sounded like:

500gb Fantom Drive Gforce 3

You can almost recognize that as the solo in Stacy’s Mom 🙂

So, maybe it stopped during the first set all on its own after all. I guess this hard disk is beginning to fail, as all rotational hard disks eventually do.

This is the disk we’ve been using.  It’s a 500gb Fantom Drive Gforce 3.  It’s about two years old, but I guess it has only seen around 100 hours of use.  Seems pretty early for it to fail, but  I guess it’s time to replace it.

1TB WD My PassportUpdate February 28, 2017: Thinking that fewer moving parts would be less likely to fail, I tried a couple different USB sticks, including a Patriot 64gb USB3 stick.  At first, I thought this was working great – it passed multiple tests recording audio for hours.  But then when I tried it at a rehearsal, it failed after only a few minutes.  Mackie tech support told me that flash drives and SSDs aren’t fully supported.

Ok, so I purchased a replacement rotational hard disk – the 1TB WD My Passport.  I’ve had good luck with the 2TB My Passport Ultra for my Time Machine backup and photo storage disks, so hopefully this will work well with the DL32R.

Update March 18, 2017: this 1TB WD My Passport has proven itself worthy! It recorded our last rehearsal without issue, and the full 4+ hours of our St Patrick’s Day gig.

Update March 20, 2017: the new version 4.6 of Master Fader claims “DL32R Improved USB drive support and recording/playback reliability on DL32R”.  Hope so!