Problems with R4

[sleepypedro]

I haven't had any problems with either of the R-4s I've owned.

I'm curious has any one with the r-4 pro ever experienced any problems? anyone ever heard of any problems with other r-4 owners?

GratefulPhish had a couple of issues with his r4 pro and quickly dumped it for a 722.  one was a power concern, one was a file corruption isuse IIRC.

[salmonite]

So I should find a heavily cushioned, larger capacity HD with a 90 sec. buffer JK. Geez I don't pay attn. to this thread for a second and kablow . Thanks to everyone who posted there individual experiences with there units, I have learned more than I thought I would. Re-formatted last night, running it tonight. Hopefully no worries. Thanks again.

[ghellquist]

Vibration = HDD can't write data= buffer fills up= HDD slow
therefore  HDD bigger buffer = more space to hold data while the vibrations stop long enough for the hard drive to get back to writing data

Well, it surely depends.
- Are we 100% certain that the write cache is used by the R4? The R4 might elect to flush the cashe after every write.   
- And are we 100% sure that write cashing is on in the actual harddiscs? It can be disabled.

I would guess that write cache is factory default on all drives now, but I am not certain. I would also guess that when a "bump" happens, the disc  marks a physical sector error and writes to one of the spare sectors. Once the spare sectors are all used up, the disc disables write cache (at least, some do, example can be Hitachi). I think there are ways to run diagnostics to gain back the sectors, but then again, what do I know.

It is possible to turn on and off write cache for a drive. See how this is done on some Hitachi drives (page 13):
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/FTool_User_Guide_206.pdf

Gunnar

[Roving Sign]

http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,61787.30.html

Doesn't the final post here seem to dismiss the vibration theory...?

After all - wouldnt there be tons of similar problems in the JB3/Iriver/lappy scene if vibrations were screwing with hard drives?