Is There A Utility For This

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ahoustondj

ahoustondj

Mac Daddy DJ
Aug 13, 2007
20,235
3,465
Texas
I have a Seagate Expansion Drive that has "locked" up on me. I guess it is partly due to my fault. I had it attached to my Pioneer MEP 7000 and was supposed to power it down before turning off the MEP. Apparently I did not! Now I cannot view or access my files.

Only two folders show, "Cue" and "Playlist". These are two files created by the MEP in conjunction with the Library/mp3 files when a playlist is created by the MEP.
When I did the properties, it shows the capacity (Amount of Gigs) as being there. I have tried opening it on other computers in the house and the MEP no longer reads it. Is there an utility to open "Locked" folders like this?
 
ahoustondj said:
I have tried opening it on other computers in the house and the MEP no longer reads it. Is there an utility to open "Locked" folders like this?
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a. What happened when you opened it on the computers? You didn't mention the results...

b. I think yer the only person here that has a MEP -- so when you figure it out, let us know... ;)
 
SoftJock Rick said:
a. What happened when you opened it on the computers? You didn't mention the results...

b. I think yer the only person here that has a MEP -- so when you figure it out, let us know... ;)
Click to expand...
It showed just Two Folders "Cue" & "Playlist".. This is the same Hard Drive that about a month ago I had to Reformat to FAT32 via Swissknife, remember?
I am about to call Seagate to see if there is an Utility or if they have a remedy.
 
jtnichol said:
Seatools?

I dunno....

will it read/write simple files?
Click to expand...
I just added a word file to that drive and I can see and read it. I am just not able to View "Music Library". It should read D:\Music Library. I am seeing only two files outside of that.
 
Sounds like a call to Pioneer...not Seagate.

UM just an idea. If I EVER have a piece of gear that is very dependent on the way it is shut down I fully recomended getting a sequential power conditioner. Turns everything on in order and reverse order during shutdown. HIGHLY recommended for this very reason.
 
jtnichol said:
Sounds like a call to Pioneer...not Seagate.

UM just an idea. If I EVER have a piece of gear that is very dependent on the way it is shut down I fully recomended getting a sequential power conditioner. Turns everything on in order and reverse order during shutdown. HIGHLY recommended for this very reason.
Click to expand...
I called Pioneer and the HD is a Third Party Issue. The thing is that just how one Safely Stops/Ejects a Flash Drive from a computer is the method that is used when disabling External Hard Drives and Flash Drives from the MEP. It is highly recommended by Pioneer, especially for Ext. HD as they have much more Data.

The Sequential Power Conditioner won't apply in this case. The Flash Drive/Hard Drive first has to be safely ejected/stopped/disabled/
 
The Pioneer works just fine, That problem does not seem to be the issue with the smaller Flash Drives. Again, who knows? Maybe it was the prior reformatting of that Particular Drive that caused the whole thing. I will get another USB Portable Drive, this time one from WD which is FAT32 not Seagate which usually is NTFS
 
its funny we often toss the instructions in the trash and bypass a prompt telling you not to disconnect without proper shut down.
 
Jon Tuck said:
its funny we often toss the instructions in the trash and bypass a prompt telling you not to disconnect without proper shut down.
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Jon,
I knew that and do that. Like I said, it could be the drive itself or maybe me if I forgot to safely disconnect the drive.
 
Well, ths means you have to go to the store and purchase a UPS backup to power your source gear as a tripped breaker or power failure will probably do the same to a drive in the future and you may be screwed if it happens early in the event. I run a backup in my source rack to avoid any problems with my drives as well as damage to the speakers by the thump that the Driverack may deliver if everything powers back up before being able to switch off the other gear so the rack has a constant feed of AC power.

The files may be there (As you mention the capacity is the same on the drive) However you may not be able to access them anymore so maybe a reformat and whatever else you need. Yes it's a PITA but it does happen.
 
Typically the issue is buffering. If you (or the MEP) do a library build and the library keeps a data file on the USB drive (flash or harddrive), you should eject the unit after the build and then reattach it. You shouldn't get an issue like you did with a read on a device, only a write, so unless the MEP is putting data back on the disc, not sure why it misbehaved like that. If the MEP is writing to the disc, I would see if there is a way to do that upfront, save it somehow and then use it, otherwise you'll have problems in the event of a powerfail as Jacob said.
 
I just looked at your manual .. they take it pretty serious:

CAUTION
When disconnecting a USB storage device, always be sure to perform the STOP operation first. If the STOP operation is not completed before disconnection, cue/loop memory and playlist update may not occur properly, resulting in the loss of data. Also, the USB storage device may becomes (sic) unreadable, or other substantial damage may occur. In the case of a HDD device, do not subject it to impact or vibration during use. Always disconnect the USB storage device before turning off the power to this unit.
 
Get the back up Canute, it's a ticking time bomb. Houston doesn't have many blackouts (In 18 years I only had one and then Ike was the other but a tripped breaker can ruin your night.
 
Check with the Pio folks, and see if they have an option to turn off write caching. For example, in Windows, you go to Device Manager->Disk drives, highlight the drive, right-click and go to Policies, and uncheck Enable write caching on the device. That means you will be doing real time writes to the drive, and not buffering/caching. Windows then does what we call a "hard write", and flushes it's buffers everytime it writes something to the drive.

The drive may also be buffering/caching the data, so you might also want to find out if you can turn that off. Read caching is great, but write caching sucks.
 
I agree with Rick .. it sounds more like a Pioneer issue and not a drive one. Given that we can't always control what happens to power, I would be leery of using a system that had to function in a specific way or it damaged a device .. lose data .. I'm ok with that, especially if you know that you have to eject to write the buffer, but it shouldn't damage the drive. I plug and unplug all the time from my windows systems. I eject only if I knew I wrote something and then only to be sure that specific data wasn't corrupt.
 
DJ SVO said:
Well, ths means you have to go to the store and purchase a UPS backup to power your source gear as a tripped breaker or power failure will probably do the same to a drive in the future and you may be screwed if it happens early in the event. I run a backup in my source rack to avoid any problems with my drives as well as damage to the speakers by the thump that the Driverack may deliver if everything powers back up before being able to switch off the other gear so the rack has a constant feed of AC power.

The files may be there (As you mention the capacity is the same on the drive) However you may not be able to access them anymore so maybe a reformat and whatever else you need. Yes it's a PITA but it does happen.
Click to expand...
I do have backups, its just that I want to repair this particular Drive.
 
steve149 said:
I agree with Rick .. it sounds more like a Pioneer issue and not a drive one. Given that we can't always control what happens to power, I would be leery of using a system that had to function in a specific way or it damaged a device .. lose data .. I'm ok with that, especially if you know that you have to eject to write the buffer, but it shouldn't damage the drive. I plug and unplug all the time from my windows systems. I eject only if I knew I wrote something and then only to be sure that specific data wasn't corrupt.
Click to expand...
It does not do that with the Flash Drives. Again, I do feel it is the Hard Drive Itself. It was never the correct one to begin. I had to reformat it and who knows if there were some bugs. This does not happen with my Western Digital drives.
 
Yes, but I'm also referring to having a constant AC supply to avoid having to do this every time there's a power issue.
 
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