Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
By richard Fri Sep 24, 2004 7:40 pm
I'm tring to get the 4k to recognise a seagate barracuda 120 gig drive
(St3120026A). Anyone used one of these sucessfully?

It sees the drive but can't seem to see the contents. Actually sometimes the 4k just freezes when its starts up with that drive in. I formatted it on the MPC but then arranged the contents on a PC - is this why I wonder?

Richard
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By Kalei Fri Sep 24, 2004 8:21 pm
I got a seagate barracuda 120gb hd in mine working just fine, cant really say if its the same model number as the one you got unless i open it up... But it should work.

Kalei
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By dudum Fri Sep 24, 2004 9:20 pm
did you arrange via Aksys? if not i bet that's the problem > reason it's formatted to Akai and not PC

i thought about hooking my USB drive up to a friends CPU for sample editing but i might hold back now...
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By Kalei Fri Sep 24, 2004 9:29 pm
Richard, btw did you make sure you got the Master/Slave settings right for the HD/CD?

Kalei

By adrian Sun Sep 26, 2004 2:01 am
Kalei, you don't have to open the MPC to find the model #. Press LOAD when you have Disk: HDname , just press WINDOW, that should open the a screen that will show you the Name, Device, Vendor, and Version of the hard drive or cd drive.

By richard Sun Sep 26, 2004 11:56 am
thanks guys I got it working but it takes a full minute on startup to recognise the drive and contents? My old hitachi 60gig took only a few seconds... very odd, I do have the jumper settings right BTW.... strange

Richard

By adrian Sun Sep 26, 2004 3:24 pm
What is the RPM on the Hard Drive?

By richard Sun Sep 26, 2004 3:42 pm
adrian wrote:What is the RPM on the Hard Drive?


7200rpm
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By ikke Sun Sep 26, 2004 6:01 pm
then put in your old drive again.. :roll:
120GB is way to big. Just put in two 60GB drives.

its just not save to throw in such a big HD. pc's do strange things with those big HD's, so the MPC will act strange to... even stranger

By adrian Sun Sep 26, 2004 6:57 pm
7200rpm is good. I just can't understand why it would take so long to power up.

I agree with ikke, 120 is too big. I would rather have two 60 Gig drives. Why? Because if the 120 fails at some point you loose a lot of info. Even if save to CD, it can be a hassle. One internal 60 and 1 USB 60 will work.

By Sean W Wed Sep 29, 2004 12:59 am
richard wrote:thanks guys I got it working but it takes a full minute on startup to recognise the drive and contents? My old hitachi 60gig took only a few seconds... very odd, I do have the jumper settings right BTW.... strange
Richard,
Check the drive documentation for a setting called "Auto-Spin". It sounds like it is disabled on that drive and that it waits for a command from the MPC4000 to start spinning, instead of starting immediatly on power-up.

Sean

By richard Sat Oct 09, 2004 2:21 pm
okay, so I've tried with these two drives; Seagate 120 gig ST3120026A and a ST3160023A, which is 160gig.

is it just because the drives are somehow too big for the 4ks brain?

They work perfectly except that both take over a minute to be recognised by the 4k - they are spinning up immediately so its not that. I am thinking of trying an 80gig next. I'd like to stick with Seagate because they are so quiet... or is there something about this series of ata100 7200rpm seagates that the 4k has a problem with?

my old Hitachi 60 gig works fine but is too noisy...

Richard

By renegadebliss Sat Oct 09, 2004 9:27 pm
richard wrote:is it just because the drives are somehow too big for the 4ks brain?
Richard


I sure hope not. I plan on doing an upgrade on my drive at some point.
I have a fairly large sample library, so will be needing more then the 60G that
I have. As a good portion of it is already backed up on CD, so I'm not really
worried about not being able to back it up, and I'm fairly religious in burning
my entire session onto CD at the end of each session, so most of my setup
is 100% backed up. I can live with the 60G but would really rather
have something larger. But if it's only issue is that it takes a minute to startup,
but all else is fine, that would be fine with me. I'll take the more time at startup
compared to the extra time always swapping my info on my harddrive. Keep
us posted on what you end up at, and what any resolutions were.....
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By Summer2000 Sun Oct 10, 2004 6:16 am
Sup fellas,
I installed a 120gig 7200rpm Western Digital in my 4K when I first bought it. I've had zero problems with it since. It boots up fine and it takes the 4K a couple of seconds to recognize it just like it did with the original drive. So far I have about 10gigs of my Akai sample library loaded up on there and I have quite a few more left to put on it.

By nerml Mon Oct 11, 2004 5:48 pm
I've got the same drive as Summer2000, also zero problems. I have seen the blank hard drive thing happen on the load screen, but that's not drive specific, as many people with many drives have seen the same. As far as boot time, does it not make sense that a larger drive would take longer to boot, because the MPC has to scan the whole thing before it finishes booting?