Looking for some hard drive solutions

I just got the 2500 about 3 days ago and Im lovin it!. I was skeptical about it at first but after doing a little bit of reading and comparing it to the other mpcs's I went and bought one and I like it.

My ideal machine would be the 4000 so Im trying to pimp out my 2500 if you know what I mean. I ordered a cd-m25/ cd-tray from guitar center for $200 dollars and now Im looking for a hard-drive.

I have a few questions...

What hard-drive is the best for the 2500? Can I get an 80gb for cheap on the internet somewhere....?

Will I be able to store/save my songs like music files with the hard drive?

I also have a very newbie like question...Does the 128 memory make the mpc go faster or something, whats the memory for?




Here's my setup

Adding extra memory increases the sample time of the 2500.

There are currently 5 drives tested/approved for the 2500. Visit http://www.akaipro.com/productsMPC2500.html .

However, there are one or two forum members that have had problems with the Hitachi 80 gig drive on that same list. My 2500 has the 40 gig Toshiba drive installed. No issues thus far.

FWIW I've got Samsung 5400rpm 40g here, no issues so far, had it in there 6 weeks or so.

Is it possible to buy any size hard drive and put it in the mpc?

What about the brand, do you think that matters? Because I was going to see what bestbuy and circuit city had tonight if I can figure out what kind of drive to put in this thing.

Is 80gb alot?, I really dont know what to get because Im not too familiar with computer stuff

Thanks

also, with a large hard drive you can make a beat and arrange it in song mode then resample the whole song back into the mpc as a wav file and save that on your hard drive. thus creating a file that is playable on your computer or burn onto a cd from the mpc once the writer works on the CD-M25

I would advise getting a drive that is on the Akai Site..although others may work as well.

You can choose among several sizes of hard drives. Of course the bigger drives hold more. But you can also connect your MPC to computer via USV to archive your tracks/files as well.

sparq wrote:also, with a large hard drive you can make a beat and arrange it in song mode then resample the whole song back into the mpc as a wav file and save that on your hard drive. thus creating a file that is playable on your computer or burn onto a cd from the mpc once the writer works on the CD-M25

thats awesome, I went to the website and saw the hard drives but I dont see why theres only 5 to pick from. There must be 25 other hard drives out there that work and I want to pick one up at my local Circuit City.


If I get one how will I be able to tell if the installation is succsessful?

would the midi sounds from my Triton(slave), stay in the hard drive if I resample the song I make?

Sorry for all the questions but Im excited

Quiet Storm wrote:

sparq wrote:also, with a large hard drive you can make a beat and arrange it in song mode then resample the whole song back into the mpc as a wav file and save that on your hard drive. thus creating a file that is playable on your computer or burn onto a cd from the mpc once the writer works on the CD-M25

thats awesome, I went to the website and saw the hard drives but I dont see why theres only 5 to pick from. There must be 25 other hard drives out there that work and I want to pick one up at my local Circuit City.


If I get one how will I be able to tell if the installation is succsessful?

would the midi sounds from my Triton(slave), stay in the hard drive if I resample the song I make?

Sorry for all the questions but Im excited

for some insight on tried and tested hard drives, follow this link.

http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=40243

the 1000 and 2500 uses the same exact drives.

me, myself, i have the Toshiba MK1032GAX. it's a 100gb hard drive.

as far as saving the triton midi sounds, no, you wouldn't be able to do that as the triton is only sending midi data not audio. you would be able to save the midi data in your sequence.

one way to tell if your installation was successfull is after installing the drive, press mode+pad 3 (save) then on the top of the screen where it says "Save To:" scroll over to the hard disk. if you see it there then it took.

for some insight on tried and tested hard drives, follow this link.

http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=40243

Yeah thats just what I needed, I'll post what hard drive Im using if it works. I think people should also list the ones that dont work.

Thanks

That's cool...but for the babies in the forum...you may want to just stick to what's on the approved list. The last thing we need is for them to post 2,500 threads about why Akai suks because the hard drive the purchased doesn't work..or in frustration of getting a drive to worlk...they cause their MPC to malfunction voidiing the warranty..and making them cough up a few hundred dollars for repair....I am just play devil's advocate here

how do you think those drives got on the "akai approved" list? akai took drives at the time of testing. there are too many drives on the market for akai to test every single one of them. it's cool, J that you are looking out for the best interest of the masses but those drives that are on the website are not the only ones that akai may have approved. it's a known fact that akai hasn't updated their website. i know that they already approved other drives that are currently listed.

Quiet Storm wrote:I think people should also list the ones that dont work.

Thanks

that's why i said in that thread:

sparq wrote:As the HDM10 is becomming more readily available, i want to start a thread where everyone can post which hard drive you purchased and if it worked or didn't work

.

so i guess no one bought a drive that didn't work yet.... we'll see.

I wont start complaining about my hard drive that dont work. I like this mpc even wiihout the hard drive. If anything happens I'll take the hd back to bestbuy or whatever because I wont be buying one online since I know it might not work.

I heard somebody got a 100gb hard drive to work which is pretty cool. Im wondering what brand to get though. I heard Seagate wasent very good and I know nothing about the other ones.

If I bought sample cd's off the internet could I have oneday lets say like 1000's of drumkits in my mpc? That would be cool, and this is a little bit off topic but have you guys heard about the motif, soundset in wav. format that are all on a cd on Ebay?

Someone turned the sounds into sample form and I was wondering if I could load those in my mpc and store the sounds in the harddrive...I Imagine it would be alot of work to categorize the files but who knows...I just really wanna build my sound library up.

How many one-shot samples could an 80gb hard drive hold?

[quote]G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G UNIT!!!! [quote]


lol, what about the cd-tray? Do you think its good to have one? I just thought about what you said and I already have a computer and money to get a card.

I was kind of trying to build up my sample library to be pretty big, I thought the hard drive feature would be pretty cool but i dont know. It seems like a 1gb flash card might cost almost as much as a hard drive maybe, and the hard drive would be better right?

I have a the cd-tray on its way right now and Im really starting to think I might not need it, 200 dollars is alot for a cd-tray that doesnt do much. Im thinkin the hard drive would be more beneficial than the cd tray, and the hard drive may not be beneficial at all, considering the noise problem or whatever.

I wonder what a multi-sample is though...

sparq wrote:
how do you think those drives got on the "akai approved" list? akai took drives at the time of testing. there are too many drives on the market for akai to test every single one of them. it's cool, J that you are looking out for the best interest of the masses but those drives that are on the website are not the only ones that akai may have approved. it's a known fact that akai hasn't updated their website. i know that they already approved other drives that are currently listed.

So you are stating that during beta testing that they only took the time to test 5 drives which was posted back in Sep 05?? There has been updates on their websites since they posted these drives...actually several updates.

I know there are too many drives for Akai to test them all and add to their websites especially when they are fixing bugs with new operating systems

But for real though...If there are more apporved drives out there, they really need to be post them on their websites. If not, they/you are asking others to spend their money (as well as time) on drives they may possibly not work well. And that's exactly what no one really needs...more disgruntled MPC users

Speaking for myself (the self-proclaimed un-official beta tester )...I installed only approved devices in my MPC 2500 to trouble shoot it properly. I couldn't use it as a benchmark if I didn't use these approved products. I have the Akai tested 40 gig Toshiba hard drive, and both of their CDM25 and 128 MB memory module. I didn't go with the approved 80 gig Hitachi drive due to numerous complaints people filed when using them in their laptop computers.