FFM in the studio, FINAL day
Jun. 29th, 2005 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleetfootmikeWell.
Tis done. And my god what a palaver the last bit was.
We booked in for Tuesday 9-11am so Mal and I could fix a couple of things.
Monday morning, the phone rings at work. It's Andy-the-studio: the very nice Mackie HDR2496 hard disk recorder he uses died in the middle of backing it up. With the latest copy of the three current customers' projects on the main disk drive..
This does, of course, include ours. FORTUNATELY, the most recent backup's only a week or so ago, and contains everything but the cleaned up vocals and the MIDI for the keys, and they're on the Cubase PC anyway.
BUT: it won't boot, and if it doesn't boot, we can't finish the demo, and at least one of Andy's customers is going to lose a live recorded string section. So, I head home from work as early as I dare, picking up a USB drive caddy on the way on the 'this may be handy' plan, and phone Andy as soon as I'm home. He, meanwhile, has phoned Mackie support (for what's as of a month ago a discontinued product), who tell him that the replacement HD needs to be 20GB or less, and can't be a Seagate.
While he's on his way, I go find the box of spare HD's, and pull out two 20GB drives: a Fujitsu, and a Seagate. Setting the Seagate aside, 'cause, after all, Mackie should know what they're talking about, right?, I clean the Fujitsu in readiness, and Andy arrives.,
Oh man. This is bad news. It's an IBM Deskstar - erm, I mean Deathstar - and it's going 'click, click, click'. This is a Deathstar on the way out, and we probably get one or two shots max at recovering the data, because that noise is the heads and the platter getting unpleasantly intimate. So...
Into the freezer it goes in a plastic bag, and we concentrate on stage 1 - downloading the new Mackie firmware onto two floppies and installing it on the Fujitsu. This takes about an hour, by the time we've actually made a couple of floppies that aren't corrupt.
We then hang around for a while till the Deathstar's cold enough, whip it out of the freezer, bung it in a spare Linux box, and download dd_rhelp and dd_rescue. Basically, these will do a bit-wise low-level rescue of the file into a disk image, which you can then mount and copy.
So, off we go: much clicking, and dd_rescue whinges like **** about the Deathstar for about an hour, before it gets past the bad sectors and starts copying the good. Which would be fine, except it's a 20GB disk, and the version of Linux this box is running has a file size limit of 2GB.
Ooops.
Stop. Remove Deathstar, refreeze. Swap everything over to the OTHER Linux box, which is running a 2.6 kernel and has shitloads of free disk, and try again. We eventually stop the dd_rhelp run around 2am, when it's recovered about 14GB of data and is thrashing over a LOT of bad blocks in the middle of the disk. I mount the disk image, and set it copying all the files over to my laptop, and go to bed.
Up at 8am, with Andy's list of what needs rescuing: it all fits on 3 DVDs, so by the time he arrives we're ready to hit the studio.
And then it all works, right?
Wrong. Turns out the Fujitsu's not a very healthy drive after all: it's fine till it gets even slightly warm, at which point it starts throwing bad sectors and the Mackie locks up. Whee.
So, off home to get the Seagate, and see if Mackie know what they're talking about. And guess what. They don't. :) it installs and boots just fine, and Andy offloads the DVDs onto it....
Bingo. EVERYTHING is rescued. I rock, and my credit with Andy is probably unquantifiably large.
Unfortunately, as I have an electrician coming at 2pm, we don't get the remix sorted even a little bit before I have to go... So it's back in at 8pm, and finally out (in the middle of a thunderstorm) with the final final mix at midnight.
Man, I'm knackered.
Tis done. And my god what a palaver the last bit was.
We booked in for Tuesday 9-11am so Mal and I could fix a couple of things.
Monday morning, the phone rings at work. It's Andy-the-studio: the very nice Mackie HDR2496 hard disk recorder he uses died in the middle of backing it up. With the latest copy of the three current customers' projects on the main disk drive..
This does, of course, include ours. FORTUNATELY, the most recent backup's only a week or so ago, and contains everything but the cleaned up vocals and the MIDI for the keys, and they're on the Cubase PC anyway.
BUT: it won't boot, and if it doesn't boot, we can't finish the demo, and at least one of Andy's customers is going to lose a live recorded string section. So, I head home from work as early as I dare, picking up a USB drive caddy on the way on the 'this may be handy' plan, and phone Andy as soon as I'm home. He, meanwhile, has phoned Mackie support (for what's as of a month ago a discontinued product), who tell him that the replacement HD needs to be 20GB or less, and can't be a Seagate.
While he's on his way, I go find the box of spare HD's, and pull out two 20GB drives: a Fujitsu, and a Seagate. Setting the Seagate aside, 'cause, after all, Mackie should know what they're talking about, right?, I clean the Fujitsu in readiness, and Andy arrives.,
Oh man. This is bad news. It's an IBM Deskstar - erm, I mean Deathstar - and it's going 'click, click, click'. This is a Deathstar on the way out, and we probably get one or two shots max at recovering the data, because that noise is the heads and the platter getting unpleasantly intimate. So...
Into the freezer it goes in a plastic bag, and we concentrate on stage 1 - downloading the new Mackie firmware onto two floppies and installing it on the Fujitsu. This takes about an hour, by the time we've actually made a couple of floppies that aren't corrupt.
We then hang around for a while till the Deathstar's cold enough, whip it out of the freezer, bung it in a spare Linux box, and download dd_rhelp and dd_rescue. Basically, these will do a bit-wise low-level rescue of the file into a disk image, which you can then mount and copy.
So, off we go: much clicking, and dd_rescue whinges like **** about the Deathstar for about an hour, before it gets past the bad sectors and starts copying the good. Which would be fine, except it's a 20GB disk, and the version of Linux this box is running has a file size limit of 2GB.
Ooops.
Stop. Remove Deathstar, refreeze. Swap everything over to the OTHER Linux box, which is running a 2.6 kernel and has shitloads of free disk, and try again. We eventually stop the dd_rhelp run around 2am, when it's recovered about 14GB of data and is thrashing over a LOT of bad blocks in the middle of the disk. I mount the disk image, and set it copying all the files over to my laptop, and go to bed.
Up at 8am, with Andy's list of what needs rescuing: it all fits on 3 DVDs, so by the time he arrives we're ready to hit the studio.
And then it all works, right?
Wrong. Turns out the Fujitsu's not a very healthy drive after all: it's fine till it gets even slightly warm, at which point it starts throwing bad sectors and the Mackie locks up. Whee.
So, off home to get the Seagate, and see if Mackie know what they're talking about. And guess what. They don't. :) it installs and boots just fine, and Andy offloads the DVDs onto it....
Bingo. EVERYTHING is rescued. I rock, and my credit with Andy is probably unquantifiably large.
Unfortunately, as I have an electrician coming at 2pm, we don't get the remix sorted even a little bit before I have to go... So it's back in at 8pm, and finally out (in the middle of a thunderstorm) with the final final mix at midnight.
Man, I'm knackered.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-29 08:44 am (UTC)Alternatively, you rock.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-29 11:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-29 02:35 pm (UTC)Wow!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-29 04:20 pm (UTC)Why do you freeze it, though? I've never heard of that.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-29 05:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-29 06:10 pm (UTC)A bigger drive might work the same -- the BIOS-equivalent just doesn't see the extra.
(Checks adverts)
Watford are still advertising 20GB Seagate drives, otherwise it's a 40GB minimum. The price difference is minimal.
If you have a spare 40GB drive, it'd be worth trying, just as a test.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-29 06:18 pm (UTC)We did, it failed.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-29 07:04 pm (UTC)And it looks as though stocks are not going to be replenished.
That manufacturer's link you provided is a bit ironic, both the BIOS upgrade that would get around some of the HDD limits and the "discontinued" announcement on the same page.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-30 02:08 am (UTC)If Andy's going to keep using the HDR, he should get the BIOS upgrade from Mackie that supports the larger drives.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-30 07:07 am (UTC)