Primary Slave is Bad

The machines we love to hate

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Rick Alexander
Posts: 3904
Joined: 12 Jun 2004 12:01 am
Location: Florida, USA, R.I.P.

Primary Slave is Bad

Post by Rick Alexander »

My main studio PC has 3 hard drives - C, D and E. C is for program files etc., D is for music files (Sonar, Cubase, Wave Lab, .wav & mp3 files etc) and E is for samples. Suddenly yesterday I started getting audio dropouts. I restarted and the readout said PRIMARY SLAVE IS BAD - BACKUP AND REPLACE. That's the D drive, the one with all the music files.

Can I just move the files and folders from D to E (there's PLENTY of space) and continue as usual? I guess I'm going to find out, because the f&fs are flying as we speak. It's going to take a couple of hours just for the main music directories to be pasted on the E drive.

I was just wondering if anyone has any insight into this particular circumstance. I will replace the drive, it's just that I'm right in the middle of a major project and I need to keep on keeping on. I would appreciate any input.
Ray Minich
Posts: 6431
Joined: 22 Jul 2003 12:01 am
Location: Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra

Post by Ray Minich »

If you can copy the files from the dying drive to a location on a good drive, by all means do it ASAP before the failing drive stops for good.
What you are saying is that the slave drive on the primary IDE channel is failing.

You could put a new slave drive on the secondary IDE (if it's not already occupied by a CDROM drive) and copy to that too.

Also you could buy a Ultra100 IDE expansion card and put places for 4 more IDE devices to connect (2 more connectors for 1 cable each, connectable to 2 IDE devices each).

Lastly, you may have to tell your application program where to find the parts of your project that have been relocated.
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Rick Alexander
Posts: 3904
Joined: 12 Jun 2004 12:01 am
Location: Florida, USA, R.I.P.

Post by Rick Alexander »

Thanks Ray! Sonar & Cubase songs each go in their own folder which also contains an audio folder for the clips. So when I moved the f&fs, everything remained associated as it should be and it's working fine now. All I have to do now is get another hd to replace the corrupted one, and shunt everything back. What a relief - I was afraid I was in for major headaches . . Image


RA<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Rick Alexander on 04 April 2006 at 05:10 PM.]</p></FONT>