Hard disk not recognised

[a.lo...@tiscali.co.uk]

Yesterday my 500Gb HDD disappeared.  From having 8800 tracks, I had none.  The unit starts and reports "B2 14G", "source: SD card."  Suspecting a disk failure, I opened up the machine, using the excellent instructions from Brad Ormsby downloaded from the Brennan website, and put the HDD into my PC.  All the files appear to be there, so I copied everything to a 500Gb SSD which I had in stock for another project.  I put this into the B2, and on switching-on, the symptoms are the same.  Both disks read OK in the PC but aren't recognised by the B2.

I guess some component of the B2 which interfaces to the HDD has failed.  Has anyone suffered a similar problem?  I'm hoping Brennan can help, but would welcome any useful information.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi a.lo...

It looks like your B2 has 'glitched' for some unknown reason and has switched its music source from 'HDD' to 'SD Card'.

If you use the front panel controls, go into 'Main Menu' --> 'Settings' --> 'Maintenance' --> 'Use HDD' and select this then the music source will be switched back from 'Source SD Card' to Source: HDD'.

Then do a power down (press the Play/Stop button until 'Saving' appears then switch off), then power the B2 back up and run 'Scan Disk'.

You should then be re-united with your 8800 music tracks.

Let us know how you get on.

Regards,

Peter.

[PMB]

Hi a.lo...,

Please try what Peter suggests and let us know how it goes.

BTW the SSD would need to have been FAT32 formatted for the B2 to recognise it.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[a.lo...@tiscali.co.uk]

Thanks Peter for your advice, it was right on target.  I was unaware that the HDD drive could be disabled by a software setting.  It is now visible again.

I formatted the SSD as FAT32 before copying, as mentioned in Brad Ormsby's instructions, so I expect either drive would now work OK.  I may switch to the SSD anyway, since the HDD has been in there for quite a while and inevitably will fail one day.  (I still can't find any predictions of lifetime of a SSD compared with HDD in this situation, but the SSD has advantages of robustness and probably energy saving.  Anyone else able to clarify this?)

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Lifetime of a SSD

I recommend watching this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XZNr7mS0iw

[Peter Lowham]

Hi a.lo...

Good to know that you are up and running again.  If B2 'thinks' that something bad is going to happen to the 'music' data, it goes into 'protective' mode and switches off access to the internal HDD.  This helps to prevent damage to the 'music' data.  So, as long as you know this, you will be able to deal with the situation if or when it happens.

Technically, the HDD is the weakest component in the B2 because it is a mechanical device.  Therefore the SSD SHOULD be more reliable, but SSDs do have a somewhat hidden issue in that they 'wear out' if they are written to a lot.  The good factor with the B2 is that most of the disk operations are 'read' and not 'write' so the SSD should not wear out quickly.

As an aside, from my viewpoint, in terms of reliability, the SD card/microSD card is the most problematic component, being somewhat prone to becoming corrupt. Brennan recently issued a software update which might improve the reliability of the SD cards.

Regards,

Peter.

On Thursday, 1 April 2021 at 20:22:36 UTC+1 a.lo...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: