gertie wrote:im starting to have the same thing with my hard drive...it still works and all but recently every now and then when i press on load or save the mpc freezes. i guess its only a matter of time till this drive dies
I know this is an old thread but I dug it up because I just had this happen to me last weekend!!! I think it all started Saturday morning. I was up overnight working on a beat and when it came time to save, the MPC4000 said, "NAW" (screen freezes). So I tried to access the memory through the computer using Aksys but Aksys said "NAW" (program freezes and gives error). However, the good news is if I gave the MPC4000 a minute or unplug the USB or reboot the PC or something, the screen would unfreeze for a brief moment. It did eventually go to the save screen and was stuck there for a minute. Somehow, during the periods it got unstuck I able to select a different drive (my external USB hard drive) to save my beat. So luckily I was able to finally get my MPC4000 to say "Go on ahead and save your beat and stop bugging me" after selecting the external USB drive and all of the freezing stopped the the machine worked normally again. At the time, I wasn't sure what the problem was because it never acted like this before but I was able to finally save the beat.
Later on that following Monday, I was working on the 4000 again and made another beat when all of a sudden I heard a clicking noise coming from the MPC!!!!! I pressed the save screen to save the beat and the MPC said "Nope I don't feel like it today. STOP BUGGING ME!!!" (screen freezes). I called on Aksys but Aksys said "NAW" So I couldn't access the memory or the contents of the hard drive. However, I was more concerned about that clicking noise and began thinking, "That hard drive is fixing to fail!!!!!! I gotta back-up this s**t). So I went into panic mode figuring if it keeps clicking like that too much longer, I could lose everything. Luckily, I didn't care that much about the beat I was working on and considered it B.S. and shut down the machine giving up the effort to save the beat. I left the machine off for about a couple of hours hoping the clicking would not start back and I would regain full access to the hard drive when I boot it back up. When I powered the 4000 up later, I immediately hit the save button and the internal hard drive contents came up without hesitation. Then I launched Aksys on the PC and gained access to the MPC4000's hard drive. At that moment, I immediately backed everything up that is on the MPC4000's hard drive to my computer. That was definitely a close call because I think that click was the so-called "Click of Death" sound that previous posters have mentioned here.
I consider myself very fortunate. However, I need to get that hard drive replaced because it's going to fail sooner or later (BTW this is a white MPC4000 I bought used 8 years ago). Until I remove and replace that internal hard drive, I'm going to immediately go to the save screen and select the external USB drive before I start working on a new beat. That way, the MPC won't keep trying to access the internal drive and give me flak when it comes time to save.
However, I did learn to recognize early signs of hard disk failure (freezing screens, sluggish performance, slow access, and clicking noises) as a result of a bad experience in 2004. That year, my computer's hard drive DID crash, I DID lose a few beats, and I DID get pissed!!!!
Good times Huh?!!!!
