Wide & narrow drives dilemma

[mrmxed]

The problem: Copying a project (approx. 4 GB of audio files, sessions, fades, etc.) from a narrow drive onto a wide drive cannot be accomplished without crashing the computer and corrupting the transferred session.

My system: Power Mac 9600/200, 320 MB RAM, Adaptec 2940U accelerator, OS 8.6, Protools v4.3, Mix Core.

I was about to upgrade to Protools v.5.0.1, but thought it prudent to first backup this ongoing project to another drive. The project lives on an Avid 9 GB narrow drive that requires its own Avid driver. To accomplish the data transfer, the Avid drive was put on the Mac SCSI bus, and a wide 18 GB drive (I also tried another wide 9 GB drive) initialized with FWB Toolkit v 2.5.3 was placed on the accelerator bus.

Dragging and dropping files from the Avid drive to the wide drive begins as a normal file transfer. After a while the computer hangs. Restarting and continuing the transfer results in further crashes and occasional warnings of errors.

Opening the newly transferred session, the wave forms all appear fine. However, about half of the tracks are mismatched in sync or play with digital noise and artifacts. The original session on the narrow drive is perfect.

Anyone come across this problem before? Will initializing the wide drive with FWB Toolkit v4.0 make a difference? Any help is most appreciated!

Mark Green

[InSights7]

Back up your data to CD ROM and then I would try initializing or at least intstalling the drivers from FWB 3.02 on both drives. The AVID drive should work with the FWB 3.02 drivers. I have no problem with these drivers on a system very similiar to yours.

------------------
Dan Matthews
InSight Sound Recording

[dshattuck]

Make sure your termination is correct. Go to the adaptec website and look at the docs about mixing narrow and wide drives. I had the same problem a while back.
http://www.audiopost.com

[mrmxed]

Thank you for the responses. The project in question has started into another work cycle, so I need to postpone further trouble shooting until after work has been completed (and pray the drive remains healthy). My guess is that common drive formats will straighten things out.

One side note - I recently experimented with a Glyph wide-to-narrow SCSI adaptor on the advice of a salesperson from one of the larger music supply outlets. It seemed like a simple solution to have narrow drives follow wide drives on the same SCSI chain. It worked for a while, then a rather new 4 GB narrow drive fried. I can not prove that the drive destruction was caused by the adaptor, however, two electronics technicians have advised me since then to NEVER put wide and narrow drives on the same SCSI chain. Any opinions?

MG

[-MaxTraxStudios-]

I have 6 wide drives on the internal bus, and 2 narrow on the external bus. I don't know about having both on the same bus, but why can't you transfer between them?? I do it all the time, something must be wrong. Also, try doing parts of it at a time, instead of the whole project at once....

Good Luck
Paul

[Jim Morris]

Check with the SCSI gurus at Granite Digital about the whole narrow/wide transfer thing. Every time I've had a SCSI problem they had the answer. Nice people. The stuff they sell is expensive but really works. FWIW

Jim Morris

[mrmxed]

To DC:

I am most grateful for the tip, and will give it a try as soon as the schedule allows! One discovery made about a year ago during routine maintenance when I tried formatting the Avid drive with FWB: Avid drives must be formatted with Avid drivers. This necessitated downloading a driver upgrade from Avid. Anyway, thanks again!

MG

[Danny Caccavo]

To mrmxed-

Your problem is most likely not related to wide vs narrow.

We had this exact same problem over a year ago xferring stuff from Avid drives (or Avid formatted drives) to FWB formatted drives. Crash and burn all the time.

Turns out the Avid drivers are incompatible with the FWB drivers (ESPECIALLY FWB 2.5.3 - you should use FWB 3.0.2).

Of course, we didn't know this at the time. Would have saved headaches.

Here's what you do -

In Hard Disk Toolkit 3.0.2, you select "devices", select the non-FWB drive (Avid drive), hold opt-command and dismount. Then remount, not holding down any key.

What this does is to force mount the Avid drive with FWB drivers. Then you can make your copy.

I still do this with Jaz drives (for some reason you have to hold the opt-command and dismount TWICE with Jaz disks) because of the occasional finder bomb copying Jaz to FWB. Another way around this is to open the session on the jaz drive (Protools), and "save a copy as" with sound files onto the Hard drive. But I've found the driver solution to work just fine.

I think part of the reason for the Digi move to ATTO drivers is for better compatibility with Avid. Of course, there are some major bumps in the roadway (as you've no doubt read here) to be fixed.

DC

[mrmxed]

This is a public thank you note to Danny Caccavo who wrote:
<<Your problem is most likely not related to wide vs narrow. ... Here's what you do - In Hard Disk Toolkit 3.0.2, you select "devices", select the non-FWB drive (Avid drive), hold opt-command and dismount. Then remount, not holding down any key. What this does is to force mount the Avid drive with FWB drivers. Then you can make your copy.>>

I first confirmed that the issue was NOT narrow vs. wide by successfully transferring digi sessions from another narrow drive to the wide drive. Then, following your instructions (I used HDT v4.0) and successfully copied the Avid drive sessions to the wide drive. Eureka!

Danny, you are a gentleman and a scholar. My sincere thanks.

Mark Green

[Danny Caccavo]

You're most welcome!

dc