320 GB drive...will it work?

[sven]

Seems like it should.  Any concerns to be had here?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136339

[S80_UK]

It might work...  However, it is only fair to point out that very few have managed to get 250GB drives to work, and even then I think that was with a bit of juggling as far as software is concerned.  There is no reason to suppose that a 320G drive will be any different.  From the hardware point of view, the drive should be compatible.  At the end of the day, there is only one real way to find out... 

[markbowen]

Son of a...I just got my 250GB drive working and now they come with an even bigger one.

You might consider your storage needs before plunging on the 320, bearing in mind that the 250GB drive is $60 cheaper, and the Phatnoise system has a stated limitation of 30,000 tracks in 999 playlists.  I am up to about 29,000 tracks (MP3, various bitrates from 128 to 320) in ca. 600 playlists, and still have almost 70GB to spare on the 250.  (I'm going to get it up to 30,001 just to see what happens).  If you have a FLAC collection, then the bigger drive is definitely what you want.

In any case, it should work, albeit with some tweaking as with the 250 -- the 250 does not work at all in Vista, and requires specific steps to work with Phatnoise Media Manager in XP.

[sven]

Interesting.  I currently have a 160GB.  I am to the point now where a 250 would work but wouldn't last me long.  I am sitting on 35k songs and a friend just gave me another 30GB of music to merge in my collection so I know I have to be close to 50k songs.  It's crazy overkill, but I just like to have it all in on place.

[markbowen]

Then by all means go for it -- you can be the guinea pig for the 320GB drive.

However, double-check with Newegg that the drive is in fact an ATA drive.  I searched Google using the same model number and it comes up SATA everywhere else.  250GB is still the biggest ATA drive I could find on Western Digital's website.

[S80_UK]

Well spotted, Mark.  I missed that   - you are right - WD only list up to 250G for IDE laptop drives. A pity...

[markbowen]

It's a SATA drive.  There is already a comment on Newegg from a disgruntled buyer, who expected ATA and got SATA.

Oh, well.  I don't think there is much of a market for ATA drives these days, so I don't know if we will see anything larger than the 250.

[sulaco]

I wonder if it would be possible to install a sata-to-ide adapter into the dms casing?

[S80_UK]

I wonder if it would be possible to install a sata-to-ide adapter into the dms casing?

Where...?



There's not that much space between the back of the DMS connector and the hard disk drive.  A workable solution would be to substantially modify the Phatbox and the DMS and then to put the IDE controller to SATA drive adaptor in the Phatbox and just have SATA cable into the DMS.  I know how I would do it, but I'm not that desperate!

[markbowen]

For anyone still interested, now there IS a 320GB IDE drive:  http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=599

Unfortunately, as it is another WD drive, the same issues experienced with their 250GB IDE drive are likely to be present in this one.  Then again, it's only 99 bucks, and shouldn't be any worse...

[S80_UK]

For anyone still interested, now there IS a 320GB IDE drive:  http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=599

Unfortunately, as it is another WD drive, the same issues experienced with their 250GB IDE drive are likely to be present in this one.  Then again, it's only 99 bucks, and shouldn't be any worse... 

I am starting to feel a challenge coming on...     (will be a month or two though)

[dburns]

I can officially confirm that the 320GB Western Digital WD3200BEVE drive works (BTW, this drive is now available for <$90). This is using PhatNoise Music Manager 2.35 - I did not try other versions. Full capacity of the drive is available in the software.

I did have some issues at first. When I first installed the drive in the DMS, I attempted to set it up using the PhatHack DMS tools 2.12. Everything appeared to work correctly, but when I stated to copy new files over to the new drive, I got several CRC errors. So, I ended up installing the old DMS drive in an external enclosure, and cloning it to the new DMS drive, adjusting the size of the PHTDTA partition to take advantage of the new space (I used Acronis True Image). This worked great - it allowed me to seamlessly migrate to the new drive with my library intact, and both the PhatBox and Music Manager software had no issues. I've also been able to add many new files since doing this, and have not had a single CRC error.

If you are considering cloning a drive to a new 320GB, let me also add that my old drive was 160GB, so LBA48 was already installed. If you are moving from a smaller drive to a >127GB one via cloning, be sure to add LBA48.

-db

[markbowen]

I can also confirm the 320GB WD drive working with Phatnoise Media Manager 3.92 -- but only in accordance with my earlier post on the 250GB WD drive:  http://forum.phathack.com/index.php/topic,1949.0.html.  That is, the initial creation of playlists and transfer of music must be done in Music Manager 2.30, and then you can use MM 3.92. 

(I've tried to narrow this down on the 320GB drive.  With playlists totalling about 200MB loaded in 2.30, the DMS still would not work in 3.92.  Five playlists totalling about 450MB in 2.30 did work thereafter in 3.92.  I don't know why, and I don't know if it's about the playlists or library size, but there you go.)

[VorTechS]

I can officially confirm that the 320GB Western Digital WD3200BEVE drive works (BTW, this drive is now available for <$90). This is using PhatNoise Music Manager 2.35 - I did not try other versions. Full capacity of the drive is available in the software.

I did have some issues at first. When I first installed the drive in the DMS, I attempted to set it up using the PhatHack DMS tools 2.12. Everything appeared to work correctly, but when I stated to copy new files over to the new drive, I got several CRC errors. So, I ended up installing the old DMS drive in an external enclosure, and cloning it to the new DMS drive, adjusting the size of the PHTDTA partition to take advantage of the new space (I used Acronis True Image). This worked great - it allowed me to seamlessly migrate to the new drive with my library intact, and both the PhatBox and Music Manager software had no issues. I've also been able to add many new files since doing this, and have not had a single CRC error.

If you are considering cloning a drive to a new 320GB, let me also add that my old drive was 160GB, so LBA48 was already installed. If you are moving from a smaller drive to a >127GB one via cloning, be sure to add LBA48.

-db

I wonder if there's anything we can diagnostically to work out what's up here?  Could be there's a calculation issue with partition sizes?

[spectre]

@Mark: I'm glad to hear that the 320GB drive works but I'm a bit confused:

Why did you upgrade if you had 70 gigs to spare and were only 1,000 tracks short of hitting the 30k barrier?

@VorTechS: Would it be possible to partition the drive and have some sort of Phathack boot loader give you a choice between which partition you wanted to load upon startup? Imagine a single 320GB drive with two 160GB partitions containing 30k tracks each on a single DMS.

/edit: I'm confused even more... is there really a 30k hardlimit?

[markbowen]

I upgraded the drive for the same reason I just put a new graphics card in my computer, even though the old one was perfectly fine:  I'm a nerd.

The drive was only $90, and I wanted to see if it would work.  I also wanted to give myself space for higher quality rips.

About the 30,000 track limit, the original Phatbox Users Manual states:
The PhatBox can handle as many as 9999 separate Disc numbers (playlists), with up to 9999 songs per Disc number. The total number of songs on the DMS Cartridge must not exceed 30,000.

The track limitation was probably theoretical rather than a known, set limitation -- having in mind that the manual was written in 2003, when the biggest available DMS would have been 40GB, and well before a number of updates to the software and the Phatbox/Keg firmware.  In fact, there are now over 30,000 tracks on my 250GB DMS (still haven't finished loading up the 320), and it still works.  What I do not know is if the Keg recognizes and can actually play every single track.

[VorTechS]

@VorTechS: Would it be possible to partition the drive and have some sort of Phathack boot loader give you a choice between which partition you wanted to load upon startup? Imagine a single 320GB drive with two 160GB partitions containing 30k tracks each on a single DMS.

I've always like the idea of having the Keg support multiple profiles, this is why I introduced PhatSort into PhatHack Media Manager so you can abuse the MP3 tags and re-code VIOT.  I should extend that one day to support 'internal tagging' for profiling and extending PhatSort to include the internal tags.

Anyway, right now I'm more interested in the CRC issues....and why they are occuring.  Having written PhatPartition with a very limited understanding of disk management it would be good to find out what is actually causing this so I can put it right.

[spectre]

Thanks for help Mark, VorTechS. I just purchased a 320GB

[sbingner]

The CRC errors seem to be related to the PhatNoise drivers -- if you use it without any PhatNoise apps open, it works better

[VorTechS]

The CRC errors seem to be related to the PhatNoise drivers -- if you use it without any PhatNoise apps open, it works better

Better, or fully?