HELP Cubase Disk overload!

[ForefrontStudio]

I'm having some issues with my Cubase. I had a band over last weekend to track drums for a couple songs, and every time I would track drums (6 tracks) and get a matter of seconds into tracking, the disk overload would red line and it would give me an error saying "too many tracks recording at one time". I had this error before a few time, but it was because my interface is USB. it would screw up at different times in the project. this time it was doing it every single time in almost the exact same spot. and this was happening after I had already recorded rough scratch guitar tracks to a click. now for the kicker.... if I hit record (enabling all the drum tracks I was trying to record) and the drummer would not play anything, it would be just fine.... odd huh? I even tried dropping the bit rate to 16bit rather than my usual 24bit. I almost had to have the band go home without getting the tracks laid at all, but I was able to push through with a couple occasional overloads by writing to my external USB HD (I know, bad idea, huh?) does this sound like my internal HD is going bad? I have noticed since I got it (dell laptop) that every now and then (maybe a couple times a day if using it all day) the HD would make a hollow "knock" sound. I just kinda brushed it off because it didn't seem to be causing any problems at the time. has anyone else had this problem before? I have another band coming in to record on monday and I'm trying to get the issue resolved before then. any help at all would be MUCH appreciated!

Here is a list of different things I tried to resolve the issue some of them may seem a bit retarded, but I was doing anything at all I could over a 2 hour period of making myself look like a fool in front of a band that traveled 2 hours to track drums.

-write 16bit rather than 24bit (44.1k on both)
-erase all reference tracks that were different bit rate/file type (they send rough recordings so I could make a tempo track before they got there)
-restarted my comp multiple times
-cleaned a bunch of stuff off my HD (had over 20gb free)
-re-installed cubase
-uninstalled all the most recent plugins I had installed in case there was one that was corrupt
-uninstalled reaper since I had installed it to try it out since my most recent session
-downgraded my interface drivers since they had been updated since my last recording session
-closed all un-needed background programs and opperations (I hate Vista!)
-made sure my laptop was opperating on "high performance" power consumption rather than "power saver" or "balanced"
-turned off my wifi card
-unplugged all un-needed USB devices
-tried a different USB cable
-disabled all active plugins in the project preset

...I'm sure there were other things, these are just the ones I thought of off the top of my head.

 

[mick thompson]

firstly whats the specs of your computer? as in processor, ram & hard disk rpm?

secondly if your system is overloading quickly you could try turning off un-needed crap running in the background. start, run type in msconfig and hit enter (dont just go to the toolbar and turn off stuff - example on my xp computer i have no more then around 7 processes running using around 120mb's or system ram), go to the last 2 sections and turn off your anti-virus & other un-needed crap your running on the computer like graphic options (nvidia control panel) download applications etc. the less running the more system resources you can free up to dedicate to recording - finally a full format and re-installation of your OS does wonders for speed.

 

[ForefrontStudio]

I turned everything off that wasn't needed in the background, and I run msconfig and disable a bunch of crap every time I install an OS. this OS has been on the HD less than a year. zero filling the HD and re-installing was the next thing I was going to try if I couldn't figure anything out from this post. I do this once or twice a year normally. I guess I am about due for that now. there is no anti-virus on here at all. I disabled the junk that comes with windows as well. The computer has dual 1.8ghz processors and 4gb of ram. it ran pretty nice for a long time! the only files that were in this project was scratch guitar (left and right) and that's it! I got rid of all the plugins and it still was doing this. sounds like it's time for a wipe, but I'm just afraid the HD is dying and was wondering if anyone else has had this issue. I don't wanna wipe everything, reinstall the OS, get all my programs and samples back on here, then the HD die on me. it takes me a good 6-8 hours at least to go through all that. do hard drives typically just "die" when they go bad, or do they go bad slowly?

 

[Force666]

The first thing is you shouldn't be writing audio to the same drive that your programs/OS are on. You're making it fight to read/write at the same time. That's why it would be working better with the USB harddrive.

Yes, hard drives definitly can die slow, it's happened to me before.

 

[mick thompson]

The first thing is you shouldn't be writing audio to the same drive that your programs/OS are on. You're making it fight to read/write at the same time. That's why it would be working better with the USB harddrive.

Yes, hard drives definitly can die slow, it's happened to me before.

actually you wouldn't be better off with usb drives - usb supports around 450mbps or 460mbps but the speed is not constant because it sends data back and forth interrupting the speed. you would be much better off with a dedicated secondary serial ata drive. less to that would be a firewire 800 or 400 - even though firewire 400 only supports 400mbps the speed does not get interrupted in the data flow making it faster then usb for writing / reading

you can try this forefront. (excuse me if i get some terms wrong - i use mac mostly now) anyway load up everything and prep for recording or playback with all the files etc. just before you hit play or record go to your task manager (ctrl-alt & del) and go to performance. when you start your session recording or playback check the cpu load in the graph & the pf usage (your ram) and see which is maxing out. if its your cpu then you know its the processor that is either overheating or just cant work with the amount of data. if its the ram well its upgrade time baby (either more ram or a solid state serial ata and dedicate memory to the ram) (solid state sata's are fucking expensive but very fast)|

if none of them are peaking you know its a software issue in which it could be anything - sound card drivers or something else (it might even be your hardware device but i dont think so - check your buffer is not too low on it)

as well as the above do a secondary test - play / record your session and open up task manager again - this time watch the processes. click the heading "cpu" once or twice to arrange by most used at the top to lowest at the bottom and see which application or driver could be causing the load. do the same for memory size & vm size

that should give a clear indication if its a software thing. if nothing is peaking and you have lots of cpu power and ram left its a driver problem, software generating error, latency & buffer problems or the actual sound card your using is fucked - post back when you have more news

 

[ScootBaloo]

Here is my attempt at a diagnosis :

The problem is throughput related so it is likely to be one of these :
1. The USB interface/USB Driver combination is not delivering data
at a fast enough rate to record 6 mono tracks at 44.1 kHz.
2. The harddrive is not able to write data fast enough to
record 6 mono tracks at 44.1 kHz.

My reasoning is as follows :

a) Most modern hard drives are perfectly capable of write speeds
that would allow recoding 6 mono tracks at once.
b) The problem is not due to your internal hard drive slowly dying
because you would notice other symptoms if that was happening.
c) You say the disk overload is happening a couple of seconds after
recording begins. A couple of seconds is consistent with the
USB driver buffers being exhausted but if the harddrive was the
problem I would expect the overload to happen immediately.

Conclusion
----------------
Its the USB interface/USB Driver not delivering data fast enough.
To test this theory, you should be able to record 5 mono tracks
without any problems but overloads happen when you try to
record 6 mono tracks.

 

[exzem]

Try running a defragmentation of the disk. If you add/remove lots of files of various sizes (like you do in a recording process), the disk tends to get fragmented leading to slower write/read times.

Your running windows right?

 

[ForefrontStudio]

Thanks for all of you help guys. I really appreciate it!

exzem: yes, I'm running windows. I checked if the HD needed defragged and it said I did not.

ScootBaloo: I originally thought it was a USB issue as well. I tried different ports, different cables, and different driver versions. the thing that REALLY gets me, is the fact that I can hit record on all 6 of those tracks, and if the drummer plays nothing, it works just fine! but as soon as he starts playing, it errors. It's still writing data either way! why would it make a difference if the drummer is playing or not?

Force666: I have a laptop with one internal SATA drive, and no external SATA ports, so writing to my internal drive is my only option unless I wanna write to USB, which as mick said, would not work very well because data has to go back and forth between the USB cable while I am recording. I have been told you should always write to a HD connected by a high speed cable (SATA, IDE, etc...) the idea of writing to a different internal drive than the OS is on is one I haven't heard though. seems like it makes a lot of sense to me. unfortinately, I don't have that option (at least not until I order my Sweetwater Creation Station *biiiig smile*)

mick: The sound card drivers don't seem to be the issue. I un-installed them, then re-installed them. on a USB interface, you actually set up the device as an external sound card so you can have low latency audio monitoring. I forgot to mention in my original post, I did monitor the everything when I was recording. the RAM and CPU are fine. there is an option in vista to view the "Resource Monitor". this shows stats on the CPU, Disk, Network, and Memory. I am looking at it right now, as I am typing this, and everything is super chill (as it should be) except for the disk. this meter maxes out for no reason whatsoever about every 10-15 seconds. which is about how long I could record audio in cubase before it would take a dump on me. I really think it's something other than the RAM or CPU. I've had projects with 30+ 24bit tracks on it, running on average 2-3 plugins per channel with only a few issues. usually just kinda glitchy and poppy playback if I have all the plugins activated. this project had zero plugins, and only had 2 tracks of audio on it, and was attempting to record 6 more. I have recorded with all 8 inputs before and only had it error on me a couple times because the USB couldn't keep up.

I think I may take time today to wipe the drive and start over and see if the HD keeps peaking like that. if it does, it seems to me like the HD is dying. does anyone agree with my theory? again, thanks everyone for helping me resolve this issue.

 

[mick thompson]

hmm okay - well i've only used vista ever about 3 times but if your hard disk vu is maxing out it could be a number of things - i believe like osx that windows now has an indexing tool for faster searching. it could be that every time you write data to your hard disk that it starts a reindex in which case it would do a full read sweep of your hard disk. if its a system utility it would have priority over your DAW and naturally your daw would develop an overload error. so try turn off any indexing applications (third party) or windows indexer itself.

how old is your hard disk? because on one of my xp machines that i use for small backups its had the same 80gb hard drive since 2001 and its still running smooth as fuck. i've never hard a disk drive fail on me ever. and even if it does fail its normally due to the circuitry or a crappy motor which you can replace (and downgrade /upgrade the disk drives firmware) and recover the files if your willing to open it up. - even if you had a secondary drive you could mirror your 1st drive, pop in the second drive instead and see if it spikes on your disk vu. if it does then you know its a 100% software based error

another thing (not sure about vista) but xp has a recovery module in which it takes "disk shots" of the hard drive to revert back to in case of a large generated error. it could be that every time you record it rescans and makes a recovery cache

when you load up task manager (not the sidebar) and you go to "view" you can select what info you want it to display to you - either under processes, services or performance you need to find an option to give you details about your disk drive. then you need to arrange it to show you the highest access application to your hard disk at the top of the list. sit there for 15-20 minutes and when it does peak the process or service that is causing the disk drive to peak will show up. then we can investigate why that service is doing that

 

[006]

Dude -

STOP RECORDING TO YOUR INTERNAL DRIVE. You are on a laptop I'm betting it's 5,400RPM which is crap to begin with even with an external drive, USB or not. Your external USB drive will suit your needs MUCH better than a slower internal laptop drive. PERIOD.

 

[Tommy Gun]

yeah, find out if the internal drive is only 5400 RPMs... if it is, you need to run an external drive for recording/mixing at 7200 RPMs.

 

[006]

Realistically though, Tommy, he shouldn't use his internal AT ALL to record to, even if it were a 10k RPM drive. It's the fact that he's doing too much for one drive to handle and honestly I'm surprised nobody else really made that point extremely clear in the first place. There is no need to be discussing anything else or any other possibilities... that is the problem.

 

[Tommy Gun]

I guess it hadn't occurred to me because I have zero issues recording to my internal drive, and so far I've done up to 24 tracks at once.

 

[006]

Then you, sir, have the most killer hard drive known to man.

I'm not saying it can't work. But when the OP has a damn external drive and his problem is writing to the internal well... gee...

 

[mick thompson]

Realistically though, Tommy, he shouldn't use his internal AT ALL to record to, even if it were a 10k RPM drive. It's the fact that he's doing too much for one drive to handle and honestly I'm surprised nobody else really made that point extremely clear in the first place. There is no need to be discussing anything else or any other possibilities... that is the problem.

its a valid point and it was posted once or twice but i dont think it comes into play until once you start going above around 12 tracks because your DAW & plugins will load into the ram along with your samples. all that the disk drive needs to do is write the .wav's / aiff's to the drive - on my macbook im capable of recording up to around 11 or 12 channels at once on the internal OS disk drive 5KRPM - i dont do it now but its what u done in the past before my firewire external drive - it starts to get choppy once you beef the track numbers up because its trying to off load a lot of high quality wav's from the ram to the disk drive all at once

it certainly would help to have a secondary (faster drive) like i posted above you should invest in a SSD Serial Ata (solid state) no moving parts - ie: its fast as fuck

 

[Tommy Gun]

Then you, sir, have the most killer hard drive known to man.

I'm not saying it can't work. But when the OP has a damn external drive and his problem is writing to the internal well... gee...

LOL... just an iMAc

 

[mick thompson]

LOL... just an iMAc

ahh mac's - is there anything better!

 

[Force666]

Realistically though, Tommy, he shouldn't use his internal AT ALL to record to, even if it were a 10k RPM drive. It's the fact that he's doing too much for one drive to handle and honestly I'm surprised nobody else really made that point extremely clear in the first place. There is no need to be discussing anything else or any other possibilities... that is the problem.

Hey now.....I tried

 

[ForefrontStudio]

mick: I turned indexing off a lot time ago. bill gates is an idiot.

so you guys are telling me that I am better off writing to an external USB HD than an internal? I am not sure of the drive speed, but I'd venture to say it's probably 5k since this is a cheaper computer. why is it just now giving me issues if that's the problem? I have recorded 8 tracks at a time before with only a little fuss (and the fuss was from my interface, not my HD) this is what my resource monitor looks like while I'm sitting here doing nothing! I have a web browser open, windows media player, and a file folder.

 

[mick thompson]

i really dont think it has much to do with the drive speed because your recording a lowish amount of channels - i really think its some software that is accessing your HDD every 15 minutes or so performing an index or write - another thing you could try is freeze the 2 guitar tracks you had - it would free up some system resources whilst recording