Seagate FW drives and PT

[Media Man]

A few weeks ago, I bought a retail Seagate 400gb FW 400 and USB drive because it was on sale for $179, and just got around to installing it and backing up some sessions last night. It's on the FW 400 port.

There is some weird stuff going on when this thing is mounted, even when it is not being accessed.

It appears to go to sleep, and when I open a PT session and try to play a file, it wakes up. The little color wheel spins around for a few seconds, and then I get the "DAE error 9131" message. It's as if PT wakes it up, even though the session I am working on is on an internal drive...and when it wakes up, the session won't play.

The only way to get my session to play is to turn off the drive. What a pain in the neck.

Any one else experiencing this? Of course I am an idiot for letting it sit around for a few weeks before installing it because Fry's has a 15 day return policy.

Mark

PT HD 7.1
Mac dual 2.5gHz G5 (not IntelMac)
OS 10.4.5

[Howardk]

This particular problem is news to me. . . I hope someone knows of a solution for you since it appears it is too late to return the drive. Keep in mind you can probably take the Hard drive out and use it in another enclosure to cure the problem. Also, Seagate used to have excellent telephone support which may help you find the trick to prevent the sleep mode. . . Also thought I would mention, 400GB is a little large for ProTools, which means the heads will be doing a lot of long seeks. Many people will partition large drives down to 100GB, and be sure not to round robin on multiple partitions on the same drive or it defeats the performance advantage or partitioning. Albeit a 400GB drive is a great place to put backups if that is your only intention. . .

[Andre Knecht]

Hi Mark,

your post reminded me of a similar one, going back a few weeks. See if any of the many pertinent suggestions, there, might help you solve the issue.

El Linko Seagato

IHTH.

[bizzle]

i have had similar problems with 400gb seagates, tried different cases, formating, replacement, had to bail on them completely except for non-protools use. also had some reliability issues with a couple, but that seems to be resolved. i am back to my tried and true ibm/hitachi drives.

Andy Snavley

[Media Man]

Also, Seagate used to have excellent telephone support which may help you find the trick to prevent the sleep mode. . . Also thought I would mention, 400GB is a little large for ProTools, which means the heads will be doing a lot of long seeks.

I didn't call them directly this time, but a friend of mine does PT installs and says this is a familiar problem with Seagate FW and PT. Seagate customer support told him that on the Mac, there is no way to turn off "sleep mode" as you can on the PC.

By the way, I was not trying to play a session off of the FW drive, but off of my internal drive. However, just being connected to the Mac FW port caused this to happen. Turning off the external drive allowed PT to play the session.

Apparently, Digi put it's Digi Database on the drive, or maybe that happened when I backed up a PT session. At any rate, when it falls asleep, PT trys to wake it up when you hit play, and that's when the trouble starts.

So the solution is to turn the drive on during backups, and turn it off while running PT...or put it on my PC and get another drive.

mark

[MARVINBASS]

I have a solution if you care to hear. I could take the drive and put it in a case by Glyph and you won’t have this problem any more. Let me know if you’re interested.

[Studio Crash]

I bought a couple bare Seagate 400GB drives from Fry's to put in OWC enclosures (My studio has 16 of them) that used to have 60GB drives inside. They have been working perfectly for 3 months now. Not a single problem. BTW, in Max OS X, you can (in the energy saver system preferences) turn on or off the option to put hard drives to sleep when possible.

I hope this helps.

[Media Man]

I bought a couple bare Seagate 400GB drives from Fry's to put in OWC enclosures (My studio has 16 of them) that used to have 60GB drives inside. They have been working perfectly for 3 months now. Not a single problem. BTW, in Max OS X, you can (in the energy saver system preferences) turn on or off the option to put hard drives to sleep when possible.

I hope this helps.

I think the problem is in the retail FW boxes, not the bare OEM versions...probably something to do with the circuit around the Oxford chipset. I'll check out the energy saving options you refer to, but according to the second hand report from Seagate, something isn't working right with the Mac.

I went ahead and ordered an OWC 500gb FW 400/800 drive to use on my Mac, and will likely move the Seagate FW box over to my PC, or take it back to Fry's for store credit since the 15 days have expired to get my money back.

Mark

[Media Man]

I have a solution if you care to hear. I could take the drive and put it in a case by Glyph and you won’t have this problem any more. Let me know if you’re interested.

Thanks for the offer...I've ordered a new drive from OWC, and will probably put the Seagate on my PC which doesn't have PT on board.

mark

[tchambeau]

Marvin,

I too have a Glyph, Seagate 250Gig drive, what would it entail to put it in an external enclosure?

Thanks