WD drive is killing me

[shoemakesmusic]

Ok, I have a 750g WD Studio I drive plugged in via 800 firewire. When I start up Pro Tools 8 and with the drive already mounted it seems to work fine. I can record for an hour or two or whatever. But, if I go take a lunch, pee, smoke, beer, or whatever break and come back, 9 times out of 10 the dang thing just quits working. By "quits working" I mean, I come back, press spacebar to hear where I left off and I get the beach ball for eternity until I force quit Pro Tools or Pro Tools kills itself. Once Pro Tools is dead I then try to access the hard drive and it either won't let me or it has already unmounted itself. I then have to unplug the power to the hard drive, plug it back in, and restart Pro Tools. As you can see this is not very professional.

I asked the guys at WD and they said to plug it into the wall socket and not to a surge protector. I told them they were crazy because A) that doesn't make any sense and B) the one thing I want on my surge protector is my hard drive!

Oh and this doesn't seem necessarily related to Pro Tools. I can mount the drive, transfer some files, and come back after a while and it does the same thing without ever opening Pro Tools.

Anybody got any ideas? I'm about to throw in the towel on this hard drive, which isn't very old and just buy an OWC or something.

[albee1952]

I would try using an FW800 to FW400 cable and run the drive at FW400 speeds to see what happens.

[tamasdragon]

I gues it would be some os related problem. These wd drives goes to sleep mode after a certain time of inactivity, but they are awake in 1-3 secs when you work again. Or they should. I've got a few of them, and all of it works flawlessly with pt8, so I don't think this is a pro tools related problem.
Oh, and mines are also working on a firewire 800 port.
Tamas Dragon

[barstool719]

in 13+ years of working in audio and IT, I have to say that WD drives absolutely suck. Just my professional opinion.

FW800 should be good to use with an 002 rack. if it does this in Leopard as well, I'd def say its a drive problem.

Just noticed this though:

iMac 2.4 Ghz
3 gig of ram
Leopard 10.5.2
Boot Camp XP
Pro Tools 7.4
Digi002

if youre still on 10.5.2 i would try upgrading to 10.5.5 or 10.5.6 first.

[flommer]

Originally Posted by albee1952

I would try using an FW800 to FW400 cable and run the drive at FW400 speeds to see what happens.

Agreed. This will test at least 2 things:

the FW400 port on your iMac

A new cable

Sounds ridiculous about their power suggestion, but who knows... Did they mean to not have it plugged in to a UPS or surge protector? They're not the same thing, of course...

[Keybeeetsss]

Originally Posted by barstool719

in 13+ years of working in audio and IT, I have to say that WD drives absolutely suck. Just my professional opinion.

I 2nd that motion; Never have trusted those drives & hate to see them coming but thatz just me...

[shoemakesmusic]

Yeah, WD actually said, " don't plug it into a surge protector or a battery backup." I'm thinking it is probably a good idea to try the FW400 port just to use a different cable and see what happens. But I am running my 002r on the FW400 and never have an issue. Or maybe I should just try USB (not with Pro Tools) and just see what happens.

[tamasdragon]

Originally Posted by Keybeeetsss

I 2nd that motion; Never have trusted those drives & hate to see them coming but thatz just me...

For me the devil is maxtor. Everyone has a different story. Wd drives are very good ones, reliable, rock solid.
Tamas Dragon

[M.Brane]

Originally Posted by tamasdragon

For me the devil is maxtor. Everyone has a different story. Wd drives are very good ones, reliable, rock solid.
Tamas Dragon

+1

I had a Maxtor ext. drive that would go to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity, and would not wake up. Couldn't change the sleep setting with Mac OS. Had to hook it to a PC for that. It worked fine after I disabled the sleep, but I still got rid of it. I have had more failed Maxtors than any other brand.

I have WDs here that are going on 10 years, and they still work fine. Never a problem with 'em. They are bare drives though. I don't like their external enclosures. Poor ventilation, and wimpy PSUs like most consumer-oriented externals.

[antidogmatiq]

i have the same problem with 1tb wd mybook.
it seems that they have the unreachable sleep mode so you can control that.
but thats the price for an low priced solution. i use it now as backup only, and purchased an seagate drive that does not go to sleep uncontrollable.