|
Log in to post
|
Print Thread |
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439
Expert
|
Expert
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439 |
G'day John, mate, this added information suggests to me that you may have a HDD on the way out. If you were one of my customers I'd advise allowing us to clone the drive and then run some diagnostics on it. Depending on the drive manufacturer and the diagnostic tools they supply you should be able to run non-destructive tests on the drive, but given that I reckon it's suspect I'd clone it first in case the tests finish it off. At the very least you should be able to interrogate the "SMART" database and see if the drive has actually overheated and you may be able to determine if the drive is running out of spare sectors to reallocate. Drives aren't that expensive. I'd suggest a Seagate 340GB or there abouts (I'm running a 500GB in my HP) and clone the Toshi's drive onto it. We use a separate machine for our cloning efforts - especially for notebooks as it is less easy when you don't have the I/O for a second drive...  If you don't have these facilities available I'd expect your local, trusted computer shop should be able to help for a modest fee. It really only takes about 15 minutes of actual labour to do though the actual cloning process could take an hour or so, and they may do it for free if you buy the new drive from them.
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya  --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 38,502
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 38,502 |
The age of that lappy would very likely mean that any internal drive choice would have to be IDE type and not SATA.
Be careful when shopping, the larger capacity drives all seem to be of SATA type.
Good news is that the IDE interface laptop drives, while being typically smaller in capacity, are also available at many sources at lower prices these days. But such is often not the case at retailers and large outlet stores, where the supply and demand side must kick in or something, causing them to price the IDE drives higher than I can get them at certain online sources. So shop around.
***Many earlier laptops shipped with less-than-wonderful-for-audio-work hard drives in them in the first place. 5400rpm w/only a 2mb buffer is one of the most often encountered, also, depending on the age of the laptop, it may even be a 4200rpm drive in there, which is less than borderline and certainly not optimum.
***Many are tempted by the laptop replacement 7200rpm drives out there. Do your homework. Cooling is a big issue. Lots of reports of failures due to this problem. The 5400rpm drive that has an 8mb or larger buffer will do the job just about as well and like as not won't suffer from the heatstroke that many 7200rpm laptop installations report.
--Mac
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021
Veteran
|
|
OP
Veteran
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021 |
I just installed this drive in January. Should be under Warrant. WD
Got to take the wife for her daily outing. Shall return.
This 160G is the only IDE drive I could find at Best Buy. I was on vacation at the time. I'll order a new one and get this one replaced under warranty.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,926
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,926 |
You can also buy direct from WD at very competitive prices, though you may have to dig some to find them. I recently bought a 500 Gb 7,200 RPM IDE drive with a 32 Mb buffer for my DAW for $63 complete--shipping and all. That was partly due to my already owning another WD drive. Micro Center has the best stock and most competitive pricing of IDE drives (now sometimes called PATA drives) on the open market of which I am aware. R.
Last edited by Ryszard; 08/26/09 07:53 AM.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021
Veteran
|
|
OP
Veteran
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021 |
Richard Thanks,
Was that a 2.5 drive or 3.5 ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021
Veteran
|
|
OP
Veteran
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021 |
RHARV,
Yes the less tracks the better
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,926
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,926 |
Quote:
Richard Thanks,
Was that a 2.5 drive or 3.5 ?
Mine were 3.5s but both WD and Micro Center have similar deals on 2.5" IDE/PATA drives.
R.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021
Veteran
|
|
OP
Veteran
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021 |
There are 9- 2.5 PATA drives on the planet. All 5400RPM 8meg cache. 160/320 WD & Seagate. I'll probably go Seagate this time as they were good in the past with warranty.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021
Veteran
|
|
OP
Veteran
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021 |
Well I ran the SMART test from WD and it passed.
If I load the song from the E drive, combine some tracks so I only have 8, bring the zoom down , it looks OK.
Now for the rest of the story.
If I load the same 12 tracks into Sonar, set the zoom resolution the same, the disc load is 11% vs 48% & the CPU is 1% vs15%.
The scroll line is very smooth and the meters react like meters should
Not complaining just observing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439 |
G'day John,
my suggestion the the drive may be on its way out is based on the temps and startup problems you mentioned more than the load and performance issues.
However, if the SMART reports are clean this casts some doubt on the diagnosis - not that SMART hasn't failed to report problems in the past.
So, before you spend possible unnecessary money, just what startup problems are you experiencing? IE do you get partway into the Windows startup or do you not get past the POST?
OR, if you would like more capacity then a new drive is the answer anyhow...
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021
Veteran
|
|
OP
Veteran
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021 |
Twice I didn't get past the post. I'm just going to wait and see. My tests with Sonar tell me that my lappy is on the cusp of being inadequate. Sonar is less of a resource user & keeps me below the line and RB puts me above. At least I'm not still using the PII 400
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439 |
Hmm, OK. Either there is a problem on the M/B or the drive is causing the POST to fail. However it is locking rather than simply not finding the drive properly.
I would locate the RAM SODIMMs and reseat them. May not achieve anything but could have an impact on startup if it isn't the HDD causing the POST failures.
If the HDD is in fact on the way out, then I/O will suffer and thus performance. The basic spec. of the machine may be dated, but is still more than adequate for the tasks you require. Make a good backup and try a defrag. hopefully it will be OK. If not then a new drive and a clone is in order, assuming of course you don't consider the price uneconomic for this machine. If possible I'd test the drive in a known good PC in case there are I/O issues on the M/B.
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,499
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,499 |
One thing i see is that you have Two sound cards sharing the same IRQ the USB and Card Buss are both 16 I would disable one sound card maybe even two, and attach a mixer to handle all the connections you are using three cards for.
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2025, Realband, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 9 32c , Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 22,163
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 22,163 |
I had a buddy call just last night with similar problem. We found that by disconnecting a DVD drive he was able to boot up. Something must have been happening when the OS checked that drive, because it would shutdown during boot ... and once in a while when he did get booted up all the way, it would shut down as soon as he put a disk in either of the two drives using that IDE cable
Disconnecting one at a time revealed the culprit drive.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439 |
The thing about IRQ's is that they are an INPUT to the system. Conceptually, the CPU is the computer and EVERYTHING else is a peripheral - including the RAM... Any peripheral that wants CPU time must generate an interrupt to catch the CPU's attention... So, if a peripheral is OUTPUT only then it will not need to generate an interrupt even if it has an IRQ assigned. Some device drivers can even be configured to make the CPU poll the device rather than depend on an interrupt. Your video display is an output device. A sound card is (usually) an output device. Exceptions with sound cards would include those with onboard synths - many of these use the CPU and system RAM to power the synth and store soundfonts - these cards would need an IRQ. In Johns case, the Creative PCMCIA card would use its IRQ. The Realtek that's on board probably would not (though I could be wrong here). I'm not certain about the USB Exitgy but it probably uses the IRQ as well. So, 2 devices that probably use the IRQ and 2 that probably don't. As long as the drivers for these devices chain the IRQ handlers properly there should be no problem BUT if there are any issues with the drivers then I would expect things to misbehave. Ditto if there are BIOS problems 'cos there are basic IRQ routines in the BIOS that are called by the OS (including the drivers). Once upon a time you COULDN'T share IRQ's. These days it is best practice to avoid it but if you must then try to choose low bandwidth devices to share. I.E NOT the HDD controller or your NIC (Network Interface Card)  Unfortunately you don't always have a choice. After all the above waffle, I notice that John had good results with an external USB drive - funny that it still shares the same IRQ thats in question. this makes me feel confident that the real problem is most likely not an IRQ sharing issue but rather points straight back to the HDD I/O. John, with that in mind, has it always had this problem or has it just developed recently and if the latter then what changed? If you don't know of any changes (particularly to software or additional hardware) then I think I'd have another look at the HDD (either full, fragmented or failing). If its always had the problem the I'd suspect the HDD is a low performance one.
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439 |
G'day rharv, Quote:
I had a buddy call just last night with similar problem. We found that by disconnecting a DVD drive he was able to boot up. Something must have been happening when the OS checked that drive, because it would shutdown during boot ... and once in a while when he did get booted up all the way, it would shut down as soon as he put a disk in either of the two drives using that IDE cable
Disconnecting one at a time revealed the culprit drive.
We find that a bit on desktop systems that use IDE - the optical drive gets a bit dodgy and stuffs up the bus*. It seems to that the push to manufacture optical drives a cheaply as possible has resulted in reliability problems with some manufacturers. We used to see a LOT of Sony's do this but they seem to have gotten their act together more recently. SATA devices work differently and shouldn't cause these kinds of issues.
Note that we don't normally see this happen in Notebooks...
* In an IDE based system, the AT bus is extended out to the drives via buffer circuitry. The master device actually controls I/O for both itself and the slave device so if either device has a problem that affects bus access it will prevent the other from functioning correctly.
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021
Veteran
|
|
OP
Veteran
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021 |
Well I've done all sorts of tests drive, memory, etc and everything says it's fine.
My final observation is that if I have the zoom level way down it scrolls fine. If zoom in to about 6 seconds showing on the screen it scrolls perfectly. It's just some of the intermediate settings. If anyone has time try setting up 12 RT at 120 BPM and play with the zoom level and see if you get stuttering. BTW I have the audio buffers at 500 and never misses a beat.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439 |
Sounds like its a simple performance issue - slow drive?
POST failures may just have been odd glitches...
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 38,502
Veteran
|
|
Veteran
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 38,502 |
In an older laptop, a few POST failures might also be indicative of the borderline BIOS battery, too.
--Mac
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RealBand
|
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439
Expert
|
|
Expert
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 1,439 |
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Video: Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac®: VST3 Plugin Support
Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac® now includes support for VST3 plugins, alongside VST and AU. Use them with MIDI or audio tracks for even more creative possibilities in your music production.
Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Macs®: VST3 Plugin Support
Video: Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac®: Using VST3 Plugins
Join the conversation on our forum.
Band-in-a-Box 2025 for Mac Videos
With the release of Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac, we’re rolling out a collection of brand-new videos on our YouTube channel. We’ll also keep this forum post updated so you can easily find all the latest videos in one convenient spot.
From overviews of new features and walkthroughs of the 202 new RealTracks, to highlights of XPro Styles PAK 8, Xtra Styles PAKs 18, the 2025 49-PAK, and in-depth tutorials — you’ll find everything you need to explore what’s new in Band-in-a-Box® 2025.
Reference this forum post for One-Stop Shopping of our Band-in-a-Box® 2025 Mac Videos — we’ll be adding more videos as they’re released!
Band-in-a-Box 2025 for Mac is Here!
Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac is here, packed with major new features and an incredible collection of available new content! This includes 202 RealTracks (in Sets 449-467), plus 20 bonus Unreleased RealTracks in the 2025 49-PAK. There are new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 4, two new sets of “RealDrums Stems,” XPro Styles PAK 8, Xtra Styles PAK 19, and more!
Special Offers
Upgrade to Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac with savings of up to 50% on most upgrade packages during our special—available until July 31, 2025! Visit our Band-in-a-Box® packages page for all the purchase options available.
2025 Free Bonus PAK & 49-PAK Add-ons
We've packed our Free Bonus PAK & 49-PAK with some incredible Add-ons! The Free Bonus PAK is automatically included with most Band-in-a-Box® for Mac 2025 packages, but for even more Add-ons (including 20 Unreleased RealTracks!) upgrade to the 2025 49-PAK for only $49. You can see the full lists of items in each package, and listen to demos here.
If you have any questions, feel free to connect with us directly—we’re here to help!
Band-in-a-Box 2025 Italian Version is Here!
Cari amici
È stata aggerate la versione in Italiano del programma più amato dagli appassionati di musica, il nostro Band-in-a-Box.
Questo è il link alla nuova versione 2025.
Di seguito i link per scaricare il pacchetti di lingua italiana aggiornati per Band-in-a-Box e RealBand, anche per chi avesse già comprato la nuova versione in inglese.
Band-in-a-Box 2025 - Italiano
RealBand 2025 - Italiano
Band-in-a-Box 2025 French Version is Here!
Bonjour à tous,
Band-in-a-Box® 2025 pour Windows est disponible en Français.
Le téléchargement se fait à partir du site PG Music
Pour ceux qui auraient déjà acheté la version 2025 de Band-in-a-Box (et qui donc ont une version anglaise), il est possible de "franciser" cette version avec les patchs suivants:
BIAB 2025 - francisation
RealBand 2025 - francisation
Voilà, enjoy!
Band-in-a-Box 2025 German Version is Here!
Update Your Band-in-a-Box® 2025 to Build 1128 for Windows Today!
Already using Band-in-a-Box 2025 for Windows®? Download Build 1128 now from our Support Page to enjoy the latest enhancements and improvements from our team.
Stay up to date—get the latest update now!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Forums58
Topics84,284
Posts777,336
Members39,611
| |
Most Online25,754
Jan 24th, 2025
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There are no members with birthdays on this day. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dansk
Deutsch - Windows
Español
Français - Windows
Italiano - Windows
Nederlands
Polski
Português
Svenskt
русский
Japanese
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Korean