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Author Topic: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles  (Read 24435 times)

Jim Williams

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #15 on: September 26, 2012, 12:23:40 PM »

Compatability is an issue. Several brands do not work in the HD24. Avoid Corsair F series. OCZ Vertex 2 60 and 90 gig and the Crucial M4 are OK.

If you try others, make sure you can return them if they don't work.
Add the Silenx 14 db noise fan and you have a near silent recorder.
www.silenx.com
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Fletcher

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #16 on: September 27, 2012, 03:54:11 PM »

Pardon my being somewhat obtuse about these drives - are they solid state or do they have moving parts?
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CN Fletcher

mwagener wrote on Sat, 11 September 2004 14:33
We are selling emotions, there are no emotions in a grid


"Recording engineers are an arrogant bunch
If you've spent most of your life with a few thousand dollars worth of musicians in the studio, making a decision every second and a half... and you and  they are going to have to live with it for the rest of your lives, you'll get pretty arrogant too.  It takes a certain amount of balls to do that... something around three"
Malcolm Chisholm

Jim Williams

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #17 on: September 28, 2012, 12:22:39 PM »

Those are all SSD's. Several new brands/types are now out, I have no info on their compatability.

If you open one up you will see a pcb stuffed with large memory chips, that's all these things are, memory chips replacing moving magnetic discs and motors.

In ten years you will be hard pressed to find a traditional hard drive, the chips are cheaper to manufacture. As their memory capabilities improve they will catch up to a terabit pretty soon.
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Fletcher

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #18 on: September 28, 2012, 01:04:26 PM »

Good to know - greatly appreciate the information!!

Peace
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CN Fletcher

mwagener wrote on Sat, 11 September 2004 14:33
We are selling emotions, there are no emotions in a grid


"Recording engineers are an arrogant bunch
If you've spent most of your life with a few thousand dollars worth of musicians in the studio, making a decision every second and a half... and you and  they are going to have to live with it for the rest of your lives, you'll get pretty arrogant too.  It takes a certain amount of balls to do that... something around three"
Malcolm Chisholm

Dinogi

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #19 on: September 30, 2012, 06:58:44 AM »

As a video guy, I have seen the use of solid state memory become the norm. The cost is coming down but is still quite an investment. The cameras I use take five 64gig P2 cards, which means about 3,500 dollars to fill the camera. The upside is that these things can take a beating that would turn a hard drive, or even an SSD drive into a paper weight. The computer equivalent to an SM57? It would seem to be a wise business move for someone to adapt a portable 24 track like the Alesis recorder for solid state memory. I also think there are a lot of advantages to card based removable storage over internal SSD drives, but thats another thread.
dinogiammattei
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New Orleans Steve

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #20 on: October 17, 2012, 02:12:48 AM »

 
  Yes. I think the problem here is the Western Digital drive. They can be iffy. Some are good... but others..... I am betting you have a Blue or Green Caviar W.D. Those are a no go.

  I went through this the hard way. I put up with the problems booting up.  mine was taking an average of 4 or 5 tries to get it. I put up with it, until I got burned on a session. It just wouldn't kick in and the band was hot to track. There was like a 15 min. delay over the usual. A real buzz killer, for sure. Then after MANY sessions on it, I attempted digital transfers between the drive bays. I rarely do this and it did not work at all.

  BTW, once they do boot up, there fine. Despite the lack of ability to do drive to drive transfers, the W.D. was fine for fireport firewire transfers back and forth.
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Steve Daffner Frenchmen Street Records - Straightwire Studios

PookyNMR

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #21 on: November 01, 2012, 05:13:25 PM »

I've been through this issue with my former HD24 units.

A number of the higher capacity WD drives do not spin at the advertised speed and thus the HD24 will not mount them.  This is what Alesis tech support had told me.  The unit looks for a number of conditions to be satisfied before the drive mounts.  If they are not satisfied, the drive won't mount.  A number of other drives were also incompatible for similar reasons - they were not manufactured up to the same spec. 

The last I used my HD24s before I let them go, the Seagate drives were working properly and never gave me any troubles mounting.

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stillonreels

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #22 on: December 24, 2012, 06:31:01 PM »

I believe the Magic Sound SATA-caddies are out of stock. But Alesis now sell SATA-caddies:
http://www.alesis.com/hd24satacaddy
I echo t_chance's suggestion : Go to  http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/hd24/  and join the group. In the files section (members only) there's a disk compability list.

Peps

Has anyone used an off-the-shelf PATA (IDE) to SATA converter with success? I'm getting an HD24 and am going to convert to SSD for noise issues. I am not, however, going to spend $100 (possibly twice) to get a new caddy from Alesis when I suspect the electronics inside are nothing more than, say, this:

http://www.amazon.com/HDE-SATA-Drive-Interface-Adapter/dp/B002Y2NI4M

I would rather mod the existing caddy. Does anyone KNOW if there is indeed ANYTHING that would cause a standard adapter NOT to work, or have you done this conversion?

Let's substitute the discussion about "cheap Chinese components" with a link to a better working adapter than the first result on google.

Thanks!
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Jim Williams

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #23 on: December 26, 2012, 01:07:03 PM »

Either the Magic Sound or Alesis SATA caddies should be used. Then mount a SSD, a 60 gig is about $60 bucks now if you shop around. Do a fast format, do not do a long format on SSD's, you will have problems. Since there are no bad "sectors" on a SSD, you don't need long formats with those. In fact, I've had nothing but problems with their long format protocalls so I never do that on PATA drives either.

Someone will probably make an adaptor to use USB drives next. Then you can pocket your album project in your shirt. I remember loading in reels of 2" tape, hurt my back once doing that.

Does Radar allow SSD's now in their caddies? Last time I used a Radar the machine noise drove me nuts, like sitting next to a washing machine. My HD24 XR with the 14 dbu low noise Silenx fan is silent now, very enjoyable.
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stillonreels

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #24 on: December 26, 2012, 01:56:34 PM »

Hey Jim-

Thanks for the information. The reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to stick to a budget. Using the Alesis caddies basically double the cost, as they cost $100 each with no hdd. (The $29 on their website are out of stock and I assume they're not coming back.) Magic Sound isn't selling these anymore. 

Do you know of anyone who has successfully used an off the shelf converter, or even anyone who tried and failed? I'm trying to figure out what the underlying reason NOT to use one of these converters is.

Thanks!

Either the Magic Sound or Alesis SATA caddies should be used. Then mount a SSD, a 60 gig is about $60 bucks now if you shop around. Do a fast format, do not do a long format on SSD's, you will have problems. Since there are no bad "sectors" on a SSD, you don't need long formats with those. In fact, I've had nothing but problems with their long format protocalls so I never do that on PATA drives either.

Someone will probably make an adaptor to use USB drives next. Then you can pocket your album project in your shirt. I remember loading in reels of 2" tape, hurt my back once doing that.

Does Radar allow SSD's now in their caddies? Last time I used a Radar the machine noise drove me nuts, like sitting next to a washing machine. My HD24 XR with the 14 dbu low noise Silenx fan is silent now, very enjoyable.
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Jim Williams

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #25 on: December 27, 2012, 11:34:56 AM »

I bought a couple of PATA to SATA "adaptors", really pcb's with conversion connectors. One was a one way, PATA to SATA, the other one was supposed to be bi-directional. They will fit into an Alesis PATA caddie IF you use 2.5" sized laptop drives. I got them for about ten bucks each from:

www.mcmelectronics.com

Here's the bad news: They don't work, none of them. Buy an Alesis caddie, drop in a SATA drive and be done with it. Better yet, go SSD and never worry about it again. Or, buy used PATA drives. You can find them at any computer fixin' shop for very low cost. No one wants them so they are giving them away. Sure beats dropping $160 for 17 minutes of 2" tape, ehh?
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Fletcher

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #26 on: December 30, 2012, 09:31:38 AM »

Sure beats dropping $160 for 17 minutes of 2" tape, ehh?

Not in my world... YMMV
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CN Fletcher

mwagener wrote on Sat, 11 September 2004 14:33
We are selling emotions, there are no emotions in a grid


"Recording engineers are an arrogant bunch
If you've spent most of your life with a few thousand dollars worth of musicians in the studio, making a decision every second and a half... and you and  they are going to have to live with it for the rest of your lives, you'll get pretty arrogant too.  It takes a certain amount of balls to do that... something around three"
Malcolm Chisholm

Jim Williams

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #27 on: December 30, 2012, 12:37:46 PM »

I quit analog tape when Scotch stopped making it in 1993. Last thing I need is to worry about tape stock, finding a blank spot or some drop-out on some critical take, no thanks, I like CYA recording.
So I sold off all the analog tape recorders in 1993 and use great converters instead, me happy.

I trusted 996, never trusted Ampex for good reasons. I don't trust any of the current tape manufacturers and I won't use NOS old tape either. I will use a hard drive and a top-o line converter without concern. No one wants to pay for analog tape anymore around here, a couple hundred bucks for 17 minutes is a bit much. I've also pinned on analog tape distorions, they drive me nuts. I can't accept 4~5% THD at 100 hz and 10k hz, too much for me now days, I've been spoiled by low THD sound.
Yes, my mileage did vary quit a bit.
So, did you give up on Radar and go back to 3M recorders?
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Fletcher

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #28 on: December 31, 2012, 01:55:26 PM »

Nah - RADAR is wonderful... but if nothing else, its nice to be around the old washing machines because it takes skills to use them.  Hard to describe I guess, the amazing acceleration of the dumbing down of our industry makes me pine for the old days when "decisions" had to be made during the process... and tape [and for that matter RADAR] forces those decisions -- which at the end of the day -- right or wrong -- is a decision made, and becomes part of the production.

Seeing as skills [on either end -- performing or engineering] aren't really necessary anymore I guess I'm just an old bitter man that waxes poetic for the fondly remembered times of yesteryear... when sitting around for a dozen hours and comping a vocal track while spot erasing breaths could almost be a relaxing day.  When budgets didn't dictate that you have a song "done" in two days from start to finish... and the first half hour or so of the day was spent on your knees checking the machine's alignment because it was your [or in my case - my] ass that was on the line if shit wasn't perfect.

It is what it is... life moves on -- its just tough to get past $7- microphones used on "auto-tuned" vocals being called music.

Peace
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CN Fletcher

mwagener wrote on Sat, 11 September 2004 14:33
We are selling emotions, there are no emotions in a grid


"Recording engineers are an arrogant bunch
If you've spent most of your life with a few thousand dollars worth of musicians in the studio, making a decision every second and a half... and you and  they are going to have to live with it for the rest of your lives, you'll get pretty arrogant too.  It takes a certain amount of balls to do that... something around three"
Malcolm Chisholm

Jim Williams

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Re: Alesis HD24 XR Replacement drive troubles
« Reply #29 on: January 01, 2013, 01:12:15 PM »

I hear ya, then again I've got a bunch of $39 Chi-com mics I rebuilt with really good EU capsules that best some of my most expensive "name brand mics".

I enjoyed aligning analog recorders, I'm very good at it using my AP analyzer to find the bias sweet spots. Now days some see me as some sort of wizard being able to do that stuff. It used to be called basic maintanence, now it's Guru Land!

About all I miss about that stuff is the smell of new Scotch 250 tape, yummy!

40 years ago I had crappy recording gear and fantastic artists.

Now I have fantastic recording gear and crappy artists.
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