On Thu, 4 Nov 2010 16:09:45 -0000, "Gareth Magennis"
wrote:

Hi,

I'm trying to replace a faulty disk drive on a Roland VS2480 (digital audio
multitrack recorder). The likely problem (according to Roland Service) is
that the new IDE drive is too large for the 2480 to format correctly.

You ought to be able to get small drives very cheaply. Figure out how
msall you need, and if necessary but a whole computer for 10 dollars
and take the drive out. But there are places online selling the size
you need, either somewhat used or maybe even never sold, NIB, new in
box.

You can search on ebay for example, and then save your search and have
them email you every time something that meets your search criteria is
listed. I've been looking for some obscure things for 3 years,
finding them once in a while, but HDDs aren't obscure,

My other idea is to format the drive when it's not in the Roland. Use
a computer to do it and make it no bigger than Roland wants. Just one
partition, unless Roland allows more.

It goes through the format process of making 4 10GB partitions but always
fails at the end of it. If you put the failed drive into a PC you can see 4
FAT 32 10G drive icons, so the machine is seeing and writing to the drive.
If you turn on the "physical format" option, the formatting takes about 8
hours, and again fails right at the end.

And do the formatting with a computer too, not the Roland. AT least
if it fails, you'll get a better message and might be able to use hd
software to learn why it failed. Run chkdsk or scandisk first to get
rid of bad sectors.

And to connect to the computer, buy a Roswill RCW618, for 20 dollars
including shipping at Newegg.com . It connects almost anything but a
zip drive or floppy drive to a USB port, so it will have many uses.

I've tried all jumper combinations
Master/slave etc.

I have an old 80G Maxtor drive that the 2480 WILL format, though it is old
and very noisy. The drive I have bought is a Western Digital 160Gb PATA
drive. (WD1600AAJB)

So is there perhaps a way to fool the 2480 into thinking this is an 80G
drive?

See above.

I actually had a similar problem with my Sony Vaio laptop when I tried to
upgrade the 40G drive - the Vaio didn't recognise the large drive properly
and DMA (I think) was not turned on, resulting in extremely slow disk
access. After posting on usenet someone pointed me to an alternative
chipset driver that made the Vaio think it had a SCSI/Raid controller and
the large IDE hard drive then worked perfectly!?!

What is this thing with too large hard drives? Is there any likelyhood of
getting this drive to format?


Sorry for the long post.

Gareth.