Tag Archive for 'Firewire'

Reports of increased occurences of 9019 & 9031 errors with Pro Tools 8.0.3

There is a growing thread on the Digidesign User Conference on 9019 and 9031 errors on Pro Tools 8.0.3 It was started by Nathaniel Reichman asking…

Since moving from the various 8.0.1 releases to 8.0.3, I frequently get the message:
“DAE is having trouble keeping up. Your disk may be too slow…firewire, etc., etc. (-9019)” which is followed by a beachball and then: “DAE error -9031 was encountered.”
And this repeats until we quit the app and relaunch. Sometimes hours go by with no problem, sometimes we get this 3 times in an hour. We haven’t seen this in PTHD, only on the PTLE/CPTK system listed below. We tried trashing databases and volumes folder.

After some system and workflow checks Reichman confirmed…

Nothing has changed in my typical post workflow or drive usage since PT 7.3.
Thanks for posting, but I really doubt the non-contiguous file theory. If that were true, none of my projects would have worked with any version of Pro Tools. For now, I blame the .3.

“Garnoil” responded….

Ok, so it must be .3. I am on 8.03 and although I had one massive, annoying, problem (0922 too many files corruption), 8.03 *at least for me*, has been a great improvement. I run HD2 and push it to the limit, I mean 192 voices (160 tracks+) + full HD film at 2k resolution. So far, so good but of course there are lots of bugz to fix, some worse than others. Good luck!

Then Digi Tech Support weighed in…

I see you have an eSATA hotswap tower in there – is that what you’re using for playback/record? If so, have you tested with other drive types?

9019 is a drive error related to drive communication speed – we usually see it on PC’s where drives are not in DMA mode.

The 9031 error is usually related to having illegal characters in the drive, file or folder name – is that possibly the case here (keep in mind that previously fudged illegal character acceptance is no longer possible, so what may have ‘worked’ before no longer will)?

Reichman responded….

Yes. And I know it’s not officially approved, but it’s performed flawlessly every since PT 7.3 on a G5. I thought I cleaned out all of my illegal characters in the PT6-7 transition. Thank you for writing back so quickly. I’ll report back if I learn anything.

The “smpkeys” chipped in….

I just experienced this same problem. I’ve been on 8.0.3 for about 2 weeks and have not seen this, however , tonight I was using the playlist lanes view for the first time, and that’s when it occurred. All my drives are internal SATAs – 1 for OS, 1 for audio, 1 for samples. Not using any video in my session, and no illegal characters. Reichman – have you found a solution with your setup?

Reichman replied…

Haven’t found a solution yet, primarily because it is happening infrequently now. Occurred once yesterday when opening an AudioSuite plug-in window.
Every time it does happen, it will continue persistently until I save, quit and restart PT.
When I get out from under this mountain of work, I’ll try another drive type for a while and see if that helps.
For the record PT 8.0.3 is really stable. For PT8 doubters, now is the time to get on board (is Frank Kruse reading this? :) )

Digi Tech Support came back with a request…

Can you guys do something for me – after you experience the error, quit Pro Tools as soon as possible after it, then send me your LogFiles folder from inside your Pro Tools folder. Zip it up and send it to: vi [at] digidesign [dot] com. Put the thread number (265212) and ’9031′ in the subject of the message.

“Sunzate” added…

I’m getting these errors right now with a midi-only session, controlling the PLAY EastWest orchestral plug-in. Never seen it before today. Recently updated to 8.0.3. Let me know how I can help.

Then “Oroz” asked…

I’m getting the DAE error -9031 a lot! Can you further explain what do you mean by illegal characters in the drive? How can I solve it?

Digi Tech Support replied…

Your Pro Tools Reference Guide has a list of unsupported characters. You should make sure that no drive, folder or file name contains any of those characters.

This error on Mac is also caused by incorrect drive format. I would recommend backing up your audio/video drives and erasing them using the Disk Utility, then copy the data back and test again.

Oroz asked…

Do you think that it may be because I’m recording to a partition (dedicated to audio) of the internal drive? If so, would a USB external drive be a solution? Since I’m on an iMac there’s only one Firewire 800 port. I have read successful stories from guys using USB drive as an alternative but I’m not sure.

Digi Tech Support replied…

Recording to a partition or to a USB drive is not recommended or supported and definitely could be a cause for these errors. Please see the General Troubleshooting thread for more details. With an iMac that has only one FW800 port, get a FW800 to FW400 cable to connect to your drives and interface.

smpkeys posted…

Just happened to me again on Saturday. This time when it happened, I was changing the output of a channel. Digi, I’ve zipped and sent my log file using the directions posted earlier.  One more thing – I had trashed prefs about 2 hrs before this crash.

So a couple of lessons from this thread. You cannot use USB drives for Pro Tools sessions. USB needs processor time to negotiate the data transfer on and off them and does it when it gets round to it. Where as Firewire has dedicated chips on the interface to manage the data transfer in a timely manner.

You must have correctly formatted drives irrespective of what platform you are running on. On the Mac platform that must be Mac OS Extended with journalling. I recommend you format your drives with Disk utility rather than any 3rd party formatting software.

Check the characters that are used for naming anything. Drives, folder, file names.

Pro Tools, Firewire 800 and Canopus boxes

There has been a thread on the DUC about using a Canopus box on Macs that don’t have Firewire 400 ports.

Apparently the Canopus spec only supports 1394 and 1394 and not 1394b (FW800) so the news looked gloomy.

However a number of users have tried using a simple FW800 to 400 adaptor cable and it has worked fine.

New Drives New Macs and Pro Tools

When you buy new external drives for Pro Tools be aware of three things.

USB is not supported. Pro Tools won’t allow you to record or playback off USB drives. They can only be used as ‘transfer drives’.

Firewire drives should have Oxford chipsets. Most drives that have Oxford chipsets do advertise the fact. Most cheaper drives don’t, so be careful. Although firewire drives that don’t have Oxford chipsets will work with Pro Tools you can expect problems with both performance issues and even data loss so my advice is don’t go thee, it isn’t worth it.

When you get your new drive home re-format it. For all Mac users use Apple’s Disk Utility as all drives attached to Mac based Pro Tools rigs must be formatted ‘Mac OS Extended (Journalled)’. For more help see the free help guide on my web site.

New Macs
Also remember that the new Macs announced yesterday have only have one Firewire 800 port and no Firewire 400 ports. If you go for a new Mac you must buy a Firewire 800 to 400 adaptor cable if you are going to use any of Digidesign’s existing hardware, although remember that Digidesign have yet to announce support for the new Macs so you will be in unsupported territory until Digidesign get their hands on some of the new machines and put them through their exhausting test procedures, but don’t expect a quick answer. If you want to be safe then do a deal on an existing approved model.

Hitachi acquires G-Tech & SimpleTech maker


Hitachi have announced they have acquired Fabrik the company whose brands include G-Tech that focuses on content creation professionals and the A/V market; their products cater to Mac users, with FireWire connectivity and product designs that complement pro Mac models. From the press release

Fabrik’s business will continue intact and form the core of Hitachi GST’s newly-formed external storage business. Hitachi GST will fully support the G-Technology and SimpleTech product lines, building upon their success and differentiation in the market. The combined company will also leverage operational, technical and product development resources, distribution channels and global reach to accelerate delivery of a full portfolio of traditional hard drives, solid state drives and branded personal and professional storage products.

It is interesting that Hitachi who acquired the IBM drive business back 2003 has now bought Fabrik giving it access to the retail drive market something Seagate has done by buying Maxtor in 2005.

I do hope that Hitachi don’t mess with the G-Tech brand and range as they are one of my preferred drive options for Pro Tools as they have Oxford chipsets in them and a reasonable warranty support.

Pro Tools Tips – Firewire drives

Don’t Hot swap firewire drives
Always shut down the computer before unplugging or plugging in a firewire drive. This goes for all firewire drive types both buss powered or those that have their own power supply.
Although firewire drives are promoted as being how swappable (can be plugged and unplugged whilst computer is running) in reality there are a number of known problems which can result in the drive or worst of all the firewire port on the computer being damaged even permanently.

Another suggestion if the drive is not to power up the drive until both ends of the firewire cable are connected. This comes from Wiebetech….

WiebeTech recommends the use of power switches in bus powered FireWire devices. This prevents the PHY within the FireWire device from transmitting voltage transients through the FireWire cable to the PHY on the motherboard of the host computer. Simply put, the FireWire device is not powered up until all connections have been made and voltages have had a chance to stabilize.

For more information on this and other issues around firewire port failures read Wiebetech‘s white paper on the subject.

Be careful how you insert the firewire cable.
People have managed to insert the firewire cable the wrong way round even though the connector is ‘keyed’ to prevent this. Take extra care to line up the slanted corners correctly. Again from
Wiebetech‘s white paper…

In this scenario, the user inserts the cable with the connector twisted 180 degrees. An examination of the FireWire six pin ports suggests that this is not possible, but it has actually been done many times. It is more likely to happen when the port is worn, or when the port easily “spreads” when reverse inserted. Some FireWire ports are built with the metal seam at the narrow end of the port, making it much easier to reverse insert the cable. The resulting (errant) electrical connections cause Power lines to be directly connected to Data lines. This invariably fries the PHY attached to that port.



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