FW Hard Drive Help? 7200 Fantom drive not working

[72reissue]

hello!

I have used a sweet, but noisy external FW for the album my band just recorded on my 002 and other gear. It has the Oxford 911 chipset, and it worked flawlessly. Just noisy!

So i picked up a 120 GB Fantom external FW 7200 quiet drive, and Pro Tools HATES IT! cant get info to/from the drive fast enough, etc...
cant even listen to the songs...
very disappointing.
The site where I bought the drive from CLEARLY stated in the listing that this drive is supported by Pro Tools. in clear print. I know people who have used non-Oxford911 drives with no problem. so i know its recommended, but not mandatory.


is this a partition issue? i partitioned the Fantom into 40 GB sections. My old drive, I did 30 GB parts. Should I reformat to 30 GB's? any thoughts greatly appreciated!

the company said they would take it back, but id love to avoid it and just get it working...

cheers

[72reissue]

...also just found out that my new Fantom drive DOES have the Oxford 911 chipset....

wonder if its broke?

whats the recommedned partition size for a recording/playback partition?

[Slim Shady]

The recommended partion size is none - especially on something as small as 120gb. Just initialize the whole thing back to a single partition and you're good to go. The days of needed smaller partitions for performance are long gone - drives are much faster now and paritioning causes more problems than it solves IMHO. I've used many drives as big as 250gb with only a single giant partition and have no problems with performance on heavy/large sessions - even with 64+ tracks on an HD rig.

However, your drive should be working fine despite the partitions (assuming you're not spreading audio files out across the partitions but keeping sessions together). Did you format it using Apple's drive utility? If you used any 3rd party software to format it, that's probably your issue right there. Are you daisy chaning any other devices off the same firewire port?

BTW I've had bad luck with Fantom drives, I stopped using them about 4 years ago when all 3 enclosures I got from them bunked out after about a year's use.

[auxsend1]

Also keep in mind that if you partition a drive like that, the first partition will be the fastest and the last will be the slowest (outside and inside of platters). And if you're looking for a great enclosure, check out WiebeTech.

[72reissue]

Also keep in mind that if you partition a drive like that, the first partition will be the fastest and the last will be the slowest (outside and inside of platters). And if you're looking for a great enclosure, check out WiebeTech.

So I am confused...it IS okay to partition? That was my logic here: I work in and build computers, so I understand seek times, hard-drive "anatomy,"...i figured, the smaller the partition, the less seek time, less time the arm of the drive has to sweep the platter, and yadda yadda.

so, to partition, or not to partition? leave it at 120 gb? or break it up?

also, some people in another forum are saying the 2 MB Buffer is my problem, and that the drive just wont work well ever?

[72reissue]

hmm?

[maccool]

Have you tried a different cable?

Partition for utility for sure, but it's not necessary for speed. PTLE requires 4MB/s for full track count. My external 200GB Barracuda in it's Granite Digital FW400 enclosure does 32-30MB/s average read from front to back. Short-stroking your drive for speed is a waste of effort.

Since your other FW drive works OK that kinda rules out a dodgy FW port.

I assume that you've made no other changes to your hardware configuration, just the FW drive?

Have you ever hot-swapped this drive? I know, FW is supposed to be hot-swappable, but I never do it, I've heard too many tales of woe from those who have. I reckon that best practice is to unmount, power down, then disconnect. If you have hot-swapped it, and there's nothing on the drive which matters, intialize it again, Journaling off, and give it another go.

If there are precious data on the drive, use Disk Warrior to repair it. Don't use Norton. Ever. Or at least, not until you've run DW.

If this thing is still not playing nice, then I'd send it back and try another of similar, or maybe something else, like the WiebeTech, or Granite Digital.