Question for informatic expert

I had an issue for almost a year on Mpc Live standalone, my Mpc was glitching, short dropouts happening when changing mode but without any pattern, in different projects and at different and unpredictable moments.
I asked help to Akai, they wanted me to make a video but it was impossible because it was unpredictable.
On the forums people were just mocking and laughing. So I started to look for the possible cause but I didn't think about the mounted hd because of no streaming and samples loaded on Ram.
At the end as last chance I unmounted the hd, put the projects on internal sd, samples and keygroups on external 32gb sd card and tried this way and all went perfectly.
It's 2 months now that all is going good.
So now my technical questions:

1 Is it possible that an internal sata hd can cause a problem when it should be just off or bypassed? (samples are loaded into Ram so the hd isn't doing anything)

2 Why that problem happened only when changing mode and not for example when turning a knob or playing an Air synth?

Sorry for the long thread but I am very curious about that, my bad informatic knowledge maybe doesn't let me get it.

Frisbi wrote:I had an issue for almost a year on Mpc Live standalone, my Mpc was glitching, short dropouts happening when changing mode but without any pattern, in different projects and at different and unpredictable moments.
I asked help to Akai, they wanted me to make a video but it was impossible because it was unpredictable.
On the forums people were just mocking and laughing. So I started to look for the possible cause but I didn't think about the mounted hd because of no streaming and samples loaded on Ram.
At the end as last chance I unmounted the hd, put the projects on internal sd, samples and keygroups on external 32gb sd card and tried this way and all went perfectly.
It's 2 months now that all is going good.
So now my technical questions:

1 Is it possible that an internal sata hd can cause a problem when it should be just off or bypassed? (samples are loaded into Ram so the hd isn't doing anything)

2 Why that problem happened only when changing mode and not for example when turning a knob or playing an Air synth?

Sorry for the long thread but I am very curious about that, my bad informatic knowledge maybe doesn't let me get it.

Sure, it's possible you could have a bad SATA drive, and it's also possible that there's a hardware failure with the SATA controller on your Live. BTW, is your SATA drive an SSD, or is it a mechanical HDD? Have you eliminated the MPC Live altogether and tried hooking it up directly to your PC/Mac and running diagnostics to see if it is running alright?

If the SATA SSD (or HDD) checks out OK via your computer, then the problem is with the MPC Live's SATA bridge or other hardware, IMHO.

Who was mocking you for reporting this? Dumb ass morons for doing that. People like that bring no value to the community.

It's a toshiba 512gb hd and it works fine when used with computer, I tried it but didn't make the diagnostic.
It never had problems loading also when it was inside Mpc, never had an issue.
It was just causing this glitch but only when it was supposed to be not doing anything and at random moments.
I am thinking to get an ssd and give it a try but now I just stay with sd cards, I have some concerts and I don't want to risk.
But it's a strange issue, isn't it? I didn't find anyone who has the same problem and i still don't understand how it is possible.

Rotational media is a bit of a pain... especially laptop drives. Due to potential movement the drive read/write head gets parked in a safe zone when note in use. The drive could decide to do this depending on its firmware, or the operating system might do this as a system call.

Total speculation, but it is quite possible that the drive read/write head is for whatever reason getting parked, and then the OS when it makes a read request is not getting a response back fast enough to do whatever it wants to do and is instead going wonky. I'd imagine the loading/saving isn't a problem because the system knows to wait on the drive... but it's possible that there are some lower level system calls that don't know how to handle it.

I've only used an SSD in the Live/X, and never had any of the problems described... but that's just me. There certainly might be something else going on.

NearTao wrote:Rotational media is a bit of a pain... especially laptop drives. Due to potential movement the drive read/write head gets parked in a safe zone when note in use. The drive could decide to do this depending on its firmware, or the operating system might do this as a system call.

Total speculation, but it is quite possible that the drive read/write head is for whatever reason getting parked, and then the OS when it makes a read request is not getting a response back fast enough to do whatever it wants to do and is instead going wonky. I'd imagine the loading/saving isn't a problem because the system knows to wait on the drive... but it's possible that there are some lower level system calls that don't know how to handle it.

I've only used an SSD in the Live/X, and never had any of the problems described... but that's just me. There certainly might be something else going on.

No, apparently nobody had same issue, I posted here and on other forums for months.
And yes, I thought about something like what you said and I also thought that maybe hd can enter in sleep mode when not in use but it's just speculation based on my low knowledge on informatic.
But if samples are loaded into Ram, the hd shouldn't be doing anything, right? It should be active only when loading project and then shuts off, right?
So why is it causing the problem when not active and it has no problem when active?
And why only when changing mode?

Mechanical hard drives can have two different types of encoders used for the motor. One uses a separate pin for position information. The other uses resistance measurement to obtain position. If the latter, the drive will have issues after getting to a hotter-than-normal operating temperature (which can happen in small enclosed not well ventilated bays like the MPC has). Try throwing an SSD in there and see if the issue is repeated.

hellnegative wrote:Mechanical hard drives can have two different types of encoders used for the motor. One uses a separate pin for position information. The other uses resistance measurement to obtain position. If the latter, the drive will have issues after getting to a hotter-than-normal operating temperature (which can happen in small enclosed not well ventilated bays like the MPC has). Try throwing an SSD in there and see if the issue is repeated.

That's interesting.
It could be related to temperature so?
Actually this year in my island got very hot and very humid so that could make a lot of sense.
So the hd could suffer high temperature?
And ssd is more reliable at high temperatures?
Yes I definitely have to try with an ssd.
Which one you recommend as more trustable?
Hey thanks a lot by the way.

Frisbi wrote:

hellnegative wrote:Mechanical hard drives can have two different types of encoders used for the motor. One uses a separate pin for position information. The other uses resistance measurement to obtain position. If the latter, the drive will have issues after getting to a hotter-than-normal operating temperature (which can happen in small enclosed not well ventilated bays like the MPC has). Try throwing an SSD in there and see if the issue is repeated.

That's interesting.
It could be related to temperature so?
Actually this year in my island got very hot and very humid so that could make a lot of sense.
So the hd could suffer high temperature?
And ssd is more reliable at high temperatures?
Yes I definitely have to try with an ssd.
Which one you recommend as more trustable?
Hey thanks a lot by the way.

ANything with moving parts will be more susceptible to heat and humidity.

The Intel 545S series of SSD's and Samsung EVO series SSD's are the best for applications which rely on increased read/right cycles such as working with audio.

@ Hellnegative

Great.
I'll get a samsung evo ssd soon.
Thanks.

Frisbi wrote:That's interesting.
It could be related to temperature so?
Actually this year in my island got very hot and very humid so that could make a lot of sense.
So the hd could suffer high temperature?
And ssd is more reliable at high temperatures?
Yes I definitely have to try with an ssd.
Which one you recommend as more trustable?
Hey thanks a lot by the way.

Definitely high temps can affect the drive's performance, but also - your 512GB drive is a mechanical drive? If so, do you finger drum at all on your Live? Even small impacts or jarring can cause a mechanical HDD to glitch, even damage its sectors. While it may appear to work fine while hooked up to a PC/Mac, I'd run diagnostics on it at the sector level to see if you have any damage. An SSD is literally the only drive I'd put in an MPC at this point, just for impact resistance alone.

EnochLight wrote:

Frisbi wrote:That's interesting.
It could be related to temperature so?
Actually this year in my island got very hot and very humid so that could make a lot of sense.
So the hd could suffer high temperature?
And ssd is more reliable at high temperatures?
Yes I definitely have to try with an ssd.
Which one you recommend as more trustable?
Hey thanks a lot by the way.

Definitely high temps can affect the drive's performance, but also - your 512GB drive is a mechanical drive? If so, do you finger drum at all on your Live? Even small impacts or jarring can cause a mechanical HDD to glitch, even damage its sectors. While it may appear to work fine while hooked up to a PC/Mac, I'd run diagnostics on it at the sector level to see if you have any damage. An SSD is literally the only drive I'd put in an MPC at this point, just for impact resistance alone.

Ah yes, I don't make finger drum but I change mode with menu+pad.
So it is really possible that pushing those pads makes the hd move somehow.
Wow those two things I didn't think about: temperature and pressure on Hd.
Thanks a lot, I think we are near to discover the issue.
It's like a treasure hunt but there is no trasure.
So you think ssd can avoid both problems?

Frisbi wrote:Ah yes, I don't make finger drum but I change mode with menu+pad.
So it is really possible that pushing those pads makes the hd move somehow.
Wow those two things I didn't think about: temperature and pressure on Hd.
Thanks a lot, I think we are near to discover the issue.
It's like a treasure hunt but there is no trasure.
So you think ssd can avoid both problems?

An SSD is certainly more tolerant of those problems, and impact isn't even a concern with an SSD since it has no moving parts. That said, if all you were doing was menu+pad navigating, that's not enough to impact the mechanical hard drive, IMHO (I mean, unless you were really smacking those pads)!

EnochLight wrote:

Frisbi wrote:Ah yes, I don't make finger drum but I change mode with menu+pad.
So it is really possible that pushing those pads makes the hd move somehow.
Wow those two things I didn't think about: temperature and pressure on Hd.
Thanks a lot, I think we are near to discover the issue.
It's like a treasure hunt but there is no trasure.
So you think ssd can avoid both problems?

An SSD is certainly more tolerant of those problems, and impact isn't even a concern with an SSD since it has no moving parts. That said, if all you were doing was menu+pad navigating, that's not enough to impact the mechanical hard drive, IMHO (I mean, unless you were really smacking those pads)!

No I was not smacking but maybe the heat makes the hd more sensible, I don't know, it's the only thing I can find as a reason.
Ssd has no moving parts?
So it should be perfect if that's the real problem

Honestly even if the HD is working well, as far as I know it can sometimes take several milliseconds for a harddrive to find the data you ask it for. It's not immediately obvious why the software would be checking the HD when you change modes, but it's not entirely impossible that it'd somehow look up something that has the side effect of checking whether the mounted drive it's still there or not, or something, and then if it's parked it takes a few ms to wake up and somehow that ends up stalling the audio. As a programmer I could see something like that happening.

rvense wrote:Honestly even if the HD is working well, as far as I know it can sometimes take several milliseconds for a harddrive to find the data you ask it for. It's not immediately obvious why the software would be checking the HD when you change modes, but it's not entirely impossible that it'd somehow look up something that has the side effect of checking whether the mounted drive it's still there or not, or something, and then if it's parked it takes a few ms to wake up and somehow that ends up stalling the audio. As a programmer I could see something like that happening.

Ok very clear.
Do you think ssd could solve this?