Problems with my hard drive

I got an mpc5k with a 500GB hard drive. It just started flakin on me for some strange reason. I get an error message that comes on when I turn my mpc on. It reads "(HD) Bad FAT sector". So now when I try to load up my beats that I saved it wont let me load it and I get another error message that says "Invalid FS on HD" Luckily I have all my songs and samples backed up on my PC. So my question is should I format the hard drive on my mpc and just copy those songs back to the mpc and if I do will I have to do anything else besides that

You will have to format. This is why I save my projects to the SD card and backup my HD. Good thing you also did. I never ever had to fo that with my PC or laptop.

You have a bad sector in your harddrive, formatting won't help you'll need to replace your drive.

Thats pretty shitty! Is there a good hard drive that you could recommend to me?

ritec wrote:You have a bad sector in your harddrive, formatting won't help you'll need to replace your drive.

It says "Bad FAT sector" (sectors of the file allocation table file system), so right now as it is, it doesn't have to be caused directly by bad sectors of the disk. A reformat of the drive will exclude any bad sectors if there were any.

For the time being just reformat the drive and keep backing up any new projects and changes to older projects like you used to do already.

If you should get those bad FAT sectors again, you can think about a new drive.

otobot wrote:

ritec wrote:You have a bad sector in your harddrive, formatting won't help you'll need to replace your drive.

It says "Bad FAT sector" (sectors of the file allocation table file system), so right now as it is, it doesn't have to be caused directly by bad sectors of the disk. A reformat of the drive will exclude any bad sectors if there were any.

For the time being just reformat the drive and keep backing up any new projects and changes to older projects like you used to do already.

If you should get those bad FAT sectors again, you can think about a new drive.

will the 5k format ignore the bad sectors? it should I would say but who knows. In fact is there a defragmenting thing on the 5k? or is there a way to do that?

mr_debauch wrote:

otobot wrote:

ritec wrote:You have a bad sector in your harddrive, formatting won't help you'll need to replace your drive.

It says "Bad FAT sector" (sectors of the file allocation table file system), so right now as it is, it doesn't have to be caused directly by bad sectors of the disk. A reformat of the drive will exclude any bad sectors if there were any.

For the time being just reformat the drive and keep backing up any new projects and changes to older projects like you used to do already.

If you should get those bad FAT sectors again, you can think about a new drive.

will the 5k format ignore the bad sectors? it should I would say but who knows. In fact is there a defragmenting thing on the 5k? or is there a way to do that?

I guess so.. isn't it plain old FAT16..? I'm not 100 percent sure, but it's at least based on FAT and AFAIR that should dismiss bad sectors after reformatting if there were any.

I think it's worth a try.


Btw. Fragmentation happens on file system level, so formatting always defragments a drive. There were people back in the days who would copy all their files to another drive, format the fragmented drive and re-copy the files from the other location to get zero fragmentation.

otobot wrote:

mr_debauch wrote:

otobot wrote:

It says "Bad FAT sector" (sectors of the file allocation table file system), so right now as it is, it doesn't have to be caused directly by bad sectors of the disk. A reformat of the drive will exclude any bad sectors if there were any.

For the time being just reformat the drive and keep backing up any new projects and changes to older projects like you used to do already.

If you should get those bad FAT sectors again, you can think about a new drive.

will the 5k format ignore the bad sectors? it should I would say but who knows. In fact is there a defragmenting thing on the 5k? or is there a way to do that?

I guess so.. isn't it plain old FAT16..? I'm not 100 percent sure, but it's at least based on FAT and AFAIR that should dismiss bad sectors after reformatting if there were any.

I think it's worth a try.


Btw. Fragmentation happens on file system level, so formatting always defragments a drive. There were people back in the days who would copy all their files to another drive, format the fragmented drive and re-copy the files from the other location to get zero fragmentation.

I would guess fat32 but who knows....

yeah I know, but I figured if there was a defrag it would rewrite the clusters skipping bad sectors... if the machine has that feature... I think the 4k did.

mr_debauch wrote:I would guess fat32 but who knows....

yeah I know, but I figured if there was a defrag it would rewrite the clusters skipping bad sectors... if the machine has that feature... I think the 4k did.

Hm, dunno about that.. always thought fragmentation and bad sectors are apples and oranges.
Fragmentation happens when the blocks of a file are all over the place and that causes the read-write head to jump from one physical lane to the other to read the file. Defregmantation tries to put the blocks that belong together to the same physical location so the structure of the file systems is more consecutive again.

I think there's no defragmentation routine in the 5K.

otobot wrote:

mr_debauch wrote:I would guess fat32 but who knows....

yeah I know, but I figured if there was a defrag it would rewrite the clusters skipping bad sectors... if the machine has that feature... I think the 4k did.

Hm, dunno about that.. always thought fragmentation and bad sectors are apples and oranges.
Fragmentation happens when the blocks of a file are all over the place and that causes the read-write head to jump from one physical lane to the other to read the file. Defregmantation tries to put the blocks that belong together to the same physical location so the structure of the file systems is more consecutive again.

I think there's no defragmentation routine in the 5K.

no I know what defrag does, I was saying the process of regrouping the clusters would write around the bad sectors. The software doing the defrag is responsible for that though. But anyways, I suppose formatting would be his easiest option if he has the backup already. personally I wouldn't keep the stock hard drive if I had the option to change it.

mr_debauch wrote:

otobot wrote:

mr_debauch wrote:I would guess fat32 but who knows....

yeah I know, but I figured if there was a defrag it would rewrite the clusters skipping bad sectors... if the machine has that feature... I think the 4k did.

Hm, dunno about that.. always thought fragmentation and bad sectors are apples and oranges.
Fragmentation happens when the blocks of a file are all over the place and that causes the read-write head to jump from one physical lane to the other to read the file. Defregmantation tries to put the blocks that belong together to the same physical location so the structure of the file systems is more consecutive again.

I think there's no defragmentation routine in the 5K.

no I know what defrag does, I was saying the process of regrouping the clusters would write around the bad sectors. The software doing the defrag is responsible for that though. But anyways, I suppose formatting would be his easiest option if he has the backup already. personally I wouldn't keep the stock hard drive if I had the option to change it.

Ok, but still, in that case I don't think defragging could help. Even if there was a routine, I'd still at least reformat the drive..

Just try it once with the reformat, wbozz.. and keep your regular backups going (that's the safest procedure anyway and what you should keep doing even in the event of getting new drive).

Just Check Disk and format it on your computer.

otobot wrote:Ok, but still, in that case I don't think defragging could help.

when you defrag, what are the three pieces of info you are shown??

mr_debauch wrote:

otobot wrote:Ok, but still, in that case I don't think defragging could help.

when you defrag, what are the three pieces of info you are shown??

Tell?
Which defrag tool/routine/program? Normally it's not the job of defragmentation to exclude bad sectors. ChkDsk mentioned by CoinUp will do that.. but I guess although based on FAT16, working the Akai formatted drive with a Win machine won't make it recognizable by the MPC.
So, CoinUp!, have you done that? Will formatting in a Win PC keep the drive recognizable by the MP?

otobot wrote:

mr_debauch wrote:

otobot wrote:Ok, but still, in that case I don't think defragging could help.

when you defrag, what are the three pieces of info you are shown??

Tell?
Which defrag tool/routine/program? Normally it's not the job of defragmentation to exclude bad sectors. ChkDsk mentioned by CoinUp will do that.. but I guess although based on FAT16, working the Akai formatted drive with a Win machine won't make it recognizable by the MPC.
So, CoinUp!, have you done that? Will formatting in a Win PC keep the drive recognizable by the MP?

i was thinking of the same, maybe the only easy option would be to do the check disk... and re format to the mpc...