Errors Getting Worse

[wevets]

I had this same problem a few month ago, and I'm now bald as a result. (Just kidding, but my hair is grayer than it was... but maybe that's just age.) I went the uninstall/re-install route, upgraded Pro Tools, made appeals to new and innovative gods - everything except the things that I thought couldn't possibly be the problem.

It turned out to be a disk problem, believe it or not. The disk seemed to be fine, and worked well most of the time, but there was something subtle going on.

Most disk drives built withing the last 5, maybe 10 years, maybe more, have built in SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) capability. This is implemented in the disk control hardware somewhere on the drive itself, and is used primarily by data centers with lots of drives to try to get a handle on when disks are about to fail so they can be replaced before they actually lose data. SMART records things like power-on hours, internal temperature and various error counts. The SMART data can be read from the disk and presented to you by a SMART reader program.
There are several SMART readers out there, some free. The one I use is Acronis Drive Monitor (free), but I'm sure the others are good too. Check the Wikipedia entry on SMART for how to interpret some of the values and what they mean if you're curious - its not always clear.
The one parameter that spelled trouble on my disk drive - which caused the AAE 6 errors - was UltraDMA CRC Error Count. Pro Tools does a lot of fast disk activity, so it sometimes drives the disks pretty hard. UltraDMA is a fast Direct Memory Access (DMA) protocol used between the chipset, across the SATA line, to the disk, and my disk was just having a tough time with it intermittently, possibly due to a flaky connection somewhere. My UltraDMA CRC error count was 9195. It should have been zero. In my case, I was able to make sure all the SATA connectors were nice and tight. My UltraDMA CRC Error Count stopped incrementing and my AAE 6 errors stopped. And now I know a lot more about the health of my disks than I did before, too.
Bottom line: Download a SMART reader, check this parameter on the disk where you store your work. Maybe buy a new disk. Maybe just make sure all your cables are good. You'll figure it out.

The Acronis SMART reader is available at:
http://www.acronis.com/en-eu/persona...-drive-health/