HD24 Hard drive formatting problem

[sonare]

Check the jumper-- if there is one remove it-- if there is not one insert one as MASTER (next to the small pins). I had one with the same malady and the jumper was the problem. You did not mention the capacity---

Rich

[joelpatterson]

Yeah, on the drives I get there's a sticker that shows where the jumper ought to be to configure it as a "Master Drive," and they are never set up like this when they come from the factory.

[recordinghopkins]

Hey great idea about the jumper! That didn't even cross my mind.
It's a 320 gig, but I know the HD24 will handle drives up to a couple of TB so that's not the problem.
Thanks guys, I will go check it right now.

[recordinghopkins]

Ok, it made it to 93% with the jumper on master, but now the deck is telling me "HD reset failed, check jumper".
Maybe no jumper at all?

[recordinghopkins]

I removed the jumper alltogether, and it mounted and formatted with no problem.
Thanks guys!
GS rocks

[MichaelPatrick]

Greg, that makes sense because yours is a standalone drive and a jumper usually indicates that it's either a slave or a master -- and both those choices require another drive to be present. NO jumper indicates it's a standalone drive and also allows the cable type to determine the drive's role.

[recordinghopkins]

Oh, ok Michael. I get it now! I had forgotten that no jumper is cable select.

[jimgsl]

I have the same problem, but I don't have any idea what a jumper is, let alone how to disconnect it. HELP!
Have Alesis HD24 and just bought two hard drives Western Digital Caviar Blue PATA 500GB 72 RPM and they should work, but when I put them in caddies and push them in to load, they mount 90%, then dismount and I get the check jumper message.
Again, have no idea what the jumper is, so have no idea how to disconnect it.
If someone could take pity and explain it all, I'd sure appreciate it.

[brightshine]

Try going to Yahoo Groups and look for the "HD24" group. Lots on info and links that might find you an answer.

I have a HD24 and I recieve emails from this group every day. Your issue is quite common. Many hard drives will not work in the HD24. I believe there is a link to info on drive compatiblity in the forum site.

[MichaelPatrick]

Originally Posted by jimgsl

I have the same problem, but I don't have any idea what a jumper is, let alone how to disconnect it. HELP!
Have Alesis HD24 and just bought two hard drives Western Digital Caviar Blue PATA 500GB 72 RPM and they should work, but when I put them in caddies and push them in to load, they mount 90%, then dismount and I get the check jumper message.
Again, have no idea what the jumper is, so have no idea how to disconnect it.
If someone could take pity and explain it all, I'd sure appreciate it.

You have a newer type and may need to leave a jumper or two intact. Here's an image.

Specifications for the 500 GB Caviar SE, and Caviar SE16 EIDE drive (WD5000AAJB, WD5000AAKB)

You should try the Cable Select and Single settings. One of those should work.

[ebulb]

Originally Posted by jimgsl

Again, have no idea what the jumper is, so have no idea how to disconnect it.
If someone could take pity and explain it all, I'd sure appreciate it.

Its a small bit of plastic that has metal shield inside that you place across two pins to form an electrical connection. Depending on which pins you put the jumper across will determine how the drive is expected to be used.. You check the diagrams of each hard drive which show the different configs and then physically move the jumper onto whichever config you need.

There are 3 settings.. Master, slave and cable select.. This is a legacy thing left over from the days when computers couldnt manually detect hardware as well as they do now.. So for IDE drives in the past you used to have to make the first drive in your computer a master and then a second drive on the same IDE buss as slave and you would manually configure this with the jumper settings.. if you didnt set it right your machine wouldnt boot and just give you a black screen... Then over time motherboards got better and you could just leave all the drives on cable select and the bios would detect for you.. Then SATA came along and it got even easier and now people barely have to think about things like this..

With HD24s though im pretty sure i have used master setting in the past and not just the cable select option so it sounds like an idiosyncrasy with some drives.. I guess it doesnt matter as long as it works..

[Richard Crowley]

Not all HD24s will accommodate more recent larger drive sizes. Mine wouldn't talk to anything bigger than 32GB.

You could investigate getting one of the 3rd party drive drawers with the built-in SATA converter chip so you can use hard drives you can still buy these days. It won't be long before finding an IDE drive will be as difficult as finding blank wax cylinders for your Edison recorder.

[audibell]

Newer IDE drives (320G) don't work in the HD24/HD24XR caddies. I bought a couple without checking the yahoo workgroup list and learned the hard way.

After mounting, it would go to 93% then hang up. Nothing worked, including limiting the drive size to 32GB by setting the jumper on pins 7/8.

But there was a silver lining. My older Glyph drives were populated with 80 and 120G IDE drives which worked NTSF just fine. 2002/2007 vintage. I removed the 80s & 120s and formatted them as FST drives in the HD24 caddies.They are all jumpered for Master or Master One Drive. I put the new WD Green 320s in the Glyphs, all good.

Next, I bought one of the $99 SATA24 caddies from the guy in CA and put in a WD2500BEVT which is a laptop 250GB sata drive. It shows about 60 hours of 8-track 24bit48k recording time. I use the older IDE FST-formatted drives to receive a back-up "Utility button:copy song04 to HD2" from the sata caddy.
I don't use the older IDE drives as the primaries. The HD24 is a backup itself to the primary recorder which is a 24ch rack-mount PC. Line-level splits are taken in back of the pres.

There is a list of drives that have been tested with the HD24. It can be found under file 'Drive_compatibility.txt' in the files section of the HD24 yahoo group.
Good luck,
WalterT

[Plush]

No, any size and type drive works in the machine. Don't spread a myth. The operator has to set up the hard drive correctly. Then do a long form format and away you go.

[ebulb]

I also had a 320gig drive a few years back that never worked in the HD24..

[Richard Crowley]

Originally Posted by Plush

No, any size and type drive works in the machine. Don't spread a myth. The operator has to set up the hard drive correctly. Then do a long form format and away you go.

Yes, there are a great many users who insist that the HD24 shows no sensitivity to the size/speed/brand/model of hard drive. But yet there are a (perhaps an equivalent size) group who have experienced first-hand how picky the HD24 can be.

Before mine died, it steadfastly refused to even mount ANY drive > 32GB. I collected 20-32GB drives from all my friends as they upgraded to larger/faster drives, so I didn't find it a terrible hardship. I never used the HD24 hard drives as the working/archival medium, but simply as the capture device which was offloaded ASAP to the post-production parts of the workflow.

[LTC67]

[Richard Crowley]

Has anyone had hd24 long formating write time out error at 3 percent help?

I have perpetually had a problem with my HD24 where it would get to 97% (or somewhere around there) and then quit, claiming it couldn't format. I could only format hard drives of 32GB or smaller. Many users have claimed that the latest firmware fixed that problem, but there is no mention of that problem in the release notes for any of the versions. Nevertheless, be sure you have the latest firmware installed.

[LTC67]

Right now I got a 250gb drive at 43% long format but I first ran a quick format.
The drive I could only get to 3% was a 120 gb I will continue on this and post results.

Have had good results with Seagate Barricuda's 40,60, and 80gb drives. Did have to mess with jumpers a lot on all of them. I try to use only 7200 speed drives.

New at all this don't know how to update firmware ... Something else to learn :(

[sonare]

If you were doing video the speed would matter but not with audio.

[RobAnderson]

My older HD24 is a little picky about one 320 GB HDD. Jumper settings are all fine. Most of the time, on first boot it will mount about 70 - 90 % and then tell me to check the jumper.

The fix is to open the caddy, disconnect the drive from the IDE connector, then reconnect it and put it back in. Works every time so far, tho' it does take a bit longer to mount than other drives.

I suspect there might be a bit of schmutz or oxidation in the connector. I do not yet have the stones to spray contact cleaner in. When the drive absolutely refuses to mount, I will have to try.

[Richard Crowley]

IME the HD24 was always very picky about what drives it would or would not work with. It appears that the hard drive firmware (and hardware, as well) was not particularly robust, and perhaps that is one reason Alesis chose to let the product just die. Even through there there appears to be no worthy successor to it. :-(

[hbphotoav]

I use mine (purchased from Rich at Sonare) as a backup to computer capture, or as a quick tracking device with my SL24.4.2. My "usual" procedure is to wire everything up, then, before I power the main switch (back corner of the HD24) or the front switch, I unseat/firmly reseat the caddy (only one used) in the right bay. So far (20-30 times) no problem with a 320GB ATA drive in a standard caddy. I figured the in/out of the caddy might just keep the pins clean from oxidation...

HB

[Timothy Powell]

Here's a few things about your issues:

If your HD-24 has an old hard drive interface board, it won't recognize certain large hard drives. Pop the top cover and look at the circuit boards that connects to the female Centronics connector. There's one for each caddy bay. If it has two large capacitors, the hard drive interface board is the newer version. If not, you have the old style. I'm not sure if Alesis still sells the upgrade boards.

If the drive is damaged from improper ejection, it won't boot correctly.

The caddy drive receptacle might be bent back from repeated use. There's a fix on the Yahoo HD-24 users group for info. hd24 : HD24

Every once in a while, if there's a booting problem, I'll need to remount the hard drive inside the caddy.

Always record with the HD-24 plugged into a decent uninterruptible power supply.

Western Digital Blue Caviar drives won't work. Sad, because those are the only new IDE drives that are widely available.

Upgrade to OS 1.21, buy the new Alesis SATA caddies ($49.00 from Sweetwater) and go with SATA drives. Some SSD drives will work.

Good luck with your machines. In 35 years of live recording, the Alesis HD-24s might not be the most elegant devices, but they are the most reliable recorders I've ever used.

[0VU]

Originally Posted by Plush

No, any size and type drive works in the machine. Don't spread a myth. The operator has to set up the hard drive correctly. Then do a long form format and away you go.

It's not a myth. Drive incompatibility with HD24 is a well known problem.

There are some types of drive which, with correct jumper setting, work happily regardless of their capacity and some types which, regardless of jumper setting or capacity, won't work at all.

Sometimes the solution is a firmware or hardware upgrade to the machine but with some drives nothing can be done. As I've found the hard way!

As pointed out above, the Yahoo HD24 group has a lot of very useful information about drive (in)compatibility.

Incidentally, the error message about checking the jumper/slave mode thing was described to me by people in the service dept at Alesis (both UK and US) as 'frequently misleading' since it's apparently a message that can be triggered by a lot of drive related problems, not just the one described. They both said it was more or less the machine's catch-all for a drive logging/startup error meaning (amongst other things), 'I can't recognise this drive/can't determine the format/it won't spin up/doesn't respond fast enough/isn't doing what I expect it to, when I expect it to/etc.. This may not be entirely true but the number or lack of possible fixes for the described problem suggests it covers a lot more errors than just an incorrect jumper setting.

[Richard Crowley]

Yes that message is clearly a "catch-all", something-is-wrong-with-the-disk message. The people who wrote the recording firmware were brilliant, but they seem out of their depth when it came to the disk handling code.

[Javi]

I have several 500 Gb Seagate IDE drives that work with our 6 HD24. When I have problems with the disk mounting, it is always one of these: jumper, ide connector, not being fully pressed to the bottom. That has worked for me so far.

[Richard Crowley]

Yes there appear to be many units with only the ordinary mechanical/jumper issues.

While others of us have units that refuse to behave that way even after dozens of hours of experimenting, updating, modifications, trying great stacks of different hard drives, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. I'm sure that you folk with well-behaved units think we are crazy or idiots. Just as we envy your trouble-free life.

PS: The only difference between the "old" drive interface board and the "new" one is the additional power supply filtering capacitor. The power filtering was marginal in the original design for some drives that had power-hungry motors at startup, etc. But before Alesis came out with the modification many owners had modified their units with additional filter caps in parallel (essentially the same thing Alesis did officially).

[peakester]

I have an HD 24 (one of the first sold in 2001) that has worked like a tank. I am a drummer and often engineer and dub drums onto tracks with click that I am given or sent. One of my clients has an HD 24 and simply has handed me the drive in the caddy in the past. A few days ago I got a drive from him that wouldn't boot as described above. Reached 90% then dismounted. I tried every jumper setting possible. I can't reformat his drive since it has the data on it I need to OD the drums onto. I guess I will have to FW the tracks into my computer, back onto my own HD 24 Hard Drive, record the drums and reverse the transfer back onto his drive. The drive works in his HD 24. My guess is he has never updated his firmware. What a pain though. The comment above about the "check jumper" catch all makes a lot of sense considering all the factors I am dealing with. Also appreciate the tips about the Yahoo HD 24 forum which I will dial into also. By the way, there is a computer Mom and Pop shop in Nashville that still has a boatload of EIDE drives in stock that he pulls out of good used business computers. They are usually 40G to 120G but cheap and tested. My guess is there are a bunch of EIDE reclaimers around the country. I have a stack that I have bought from him.