Hard Drive problem

Hey guys, just installed a Western Digital Scorpio 160GB HD, MPC (JJ OS 3.16) loads up the 128MB Installed screen and just sits there, never moves. Take the hard drive out, MPC loads just fine ... anyone else seen this problem?

I'm such an impatient twit ... let it sit there for literally 15 minutes and then it finally let me format it ... guess it just takes awhile for the OS to sort out what;s going on with it ... BAM I'm a happy dude

I've got a Samsung 160gb (forget the exact model number) that I bought from MPC Stuff that I just installed, I've been letting mine sit on the "load from hard disk" for about an hour now and still isn't being detected.. /:

I'm gonna go ahead and just let it sit on overnight and hopefully tomorrow in the morning it'll be booted up and ready to format.

dude thats basically what I had to do ... it may be that the OS has to "take inventory" of the available sectors on the disc, and since its not a very sophisticated OS I'm sure 16oGB is a ton of space to go through. I kept shutting mine off, reseating it, all that, finally just walked away for a long time and when I came back it had loaded.

Patience young grasshopper

I let it sit on this screen for a solid 24 hours and still nothing...


Anything in particular you guys do while you let it sit?

actually if you've gotten this far then you might just need to format it, or is that where it's stuck? When I had my problem it wouldn't load the OS, it was stuck on the "128MB Installed" screen ... are you able to navigate through any menu items?

Yeah, I'm stuck at being able to format the drive. The MPC doesn't detect that it's there. Once I format it I should be good to go.

I have JJOS installed from my 64gb CF card, so I'm able to use and navigate the MPC fully, with no problems.

Do you think the particular drive I have just isn't compatible with the MPC? If that's the case, I'll be pretty annoyed since I bought it from MPC Stuff and you'd think they, y'know, know that the drive works with MPC 1000s.

If you bought it from them I'm sure it works, take it back out of the MPC and make sure none of the pins are bent. You have to be extremely gentle with everything on these things, the CF slots and the HD's can get bent pins pretty easy. Can you log onto the the HD using the USB option in the MPC, you know like connect to it from your computer?

I plugged it into my PC, it recognized it but the drive didn't show up. I plugged it into my mac, and it showed up, I initialized it, and it opened in disk utility. There was no partition on the drive so I made a new one the size of the entire drive, formatted it in ExFAT, not sure if that matters but that format is easiest for me since I've got mac and PC.

You'd think that would work right? NOPE. Still nothing on the MPC... but it's only been a few minutes since I partitioned it so I guess I'm just gonna let it sit for a while (again...) and see if it picks up anything now or later or whenever.. /:

I think you might actually need to format it as NTFS ... the FAT file system has limitation on how much space it can allocate. There might be something going on in the MPC ... it might be time to take it apart and make sure the connection from the HD10 to the main board has not come loose.

dexnefex wrote:I think you might actually need to format it as NTFS ... the FAT file system has limitation on how much space it can allocate. There might be something going on in the MPC ... it might be time to take it apart and make sure the connection from the HD10 to the main board has not come loose.

I don't think you want to be doing that, NTFS isn't supported by MPCs. FAT32 is the way to go, only way to go in fact. I don't think exFAT will work either, haven't tested it myself though.

You probably want to be careful doing anything in Disk Utility. Just make sure the partition map scheme is still MBR and then format it to FAT32 in Windows if you can't get the MPC to do it.

OP, is there any reason why you haven't contacted MPCStuff about this?

MPC-Tutor wrote:

dexnefex wrote:I think you might actually need to format it as NTFS ... the FAT file system has limitation on how much space it can allocate. There might be something going on in the MPC ... it might be time to take it apart and make sure the connection from the HD10 to the main board has not come loose.

I don't think you want to be doing that, NTFS isn't supported by MPCs.

OP, is there any reason why you haven't contacted MPCStuff about this?

I'll crack it open and double check all the connections tonight when I get home. Also I'll email MPC Stuff when I get some time in my day.

I guess the only reason why I hadn't contacted them yet is because I wanted to rule out all possible user errors first, and see if maybe there was something I myself wasn't doing right.

Crap thanks MPC-Tutor! I did not think the MPC would be FAT but I double checked and you are absolutely right! thanks for being respectful and not just calling me an idiot like some of the other members, kudos!

MPC-Tutor wrote:FAT32 is the way to go, only way to go in fact.

I reformatted my drive to FAT32 and that solved my problem! Thanks so much for the help everybody!