System Crash

[KJ-G]

Hi All,

I was gigging on Saturday and my system crashed whilst starting a song off. I use an external HDD and connect my MacBookPro into my offboard digital mixer (soundcard!) and then to the external HDD all via Firewire. I was using MegaSeg and also had stickies open at the time. My version of kJams was d50r64.

I couldn't quit and it's such a rarity I get any hardware problems that I couldn't even remember how to force quit (yeah, I know ). Holding the start button forced a shutdown, but the system wouldn't restart properly: it booted but soon crashed. A few minutes later I tried again and it did at least boot properly and I was able to open kJams. Unfortunately it crashed again.

As I was gigging close to home I was able to go back, grab discs and finish off the show that way.

When I got home the Mac booted OK so I left kJams alone and made sure I had a fresh Time Machine backup of the system and made a new copy of my music library on another external drive.

The next day a friend suggested running a disk diagnostic on startup. That reported that the internal drive was OK. Likewise when I took the Mac to the Apple Store for them to run diagnostics, all was well with it.

I applied the latest kJams update (r65) and all was well last night...apart from I got a few messages "There was an error saving the file "Singer.xml". Is it on a locked volume? File Not Found".

My suspicions are as follows, but I would welcome any other pointers:
1. Internal HDD has an intermittent fault
2. External HDD has an intermittent fault
3. There is a communications problem - e.g. Fire Wire lead has an intermittent fault
4. Overheating? It was relatively warm and humid (by British standards) on Saturday night. I notice my MacBookPro does run fairly warm, as does the external drive (I have it spinning all the time). Could this be the problem?

I'd be very grateful for any advice.

- G

[dave]

kjams had a bug. update to latest.

[KJ-G]

Thanks Dave,
all the Best - G

[KJ-G]

Oh...dear!

I had almost the sam scenario again last night. I got locked volume messages and one stating there was a "Quick Time Error" and that there was "no such volume".

Again it was a warm night and the problem arose around an hour into the show. I wonder whether my MacBookPro or the external hard drive might be overheating?

The mac sits on a velcro shelf, which is quite insulating. The external drive is aluminium but without a fan. Also I don't think heat transfer has been given too much thought other than to make the sleeve in 2mm thick ally. It sits in a semi-open drawer without too much air-space above. Both get fairly warm in use and I have the drive spinning constantly. It is a 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda.

The Mac wouldn't reboot successfully last night but seems fine now. I reckon this will be a pain to replicate, until the next time it fails

Does anyone have any suggestions please?

---

I do seem to have problems with external drives. I bought a naked 3.5" driver from an Amazon reseller and put it in one of my other aluminium USB/eSATA/Firewire caddies. It formatted OK so I labelled it with marker pen (to distinguish it from other drives). I then set about backing up my music collection and went away. Some time later it failed. Since then I have not been able to mount it correctly or read/write to/from it.

On close inspection I noticed some evidence of transit damage - a gash only about 2mm wide, but nearly as deep in the metal of the 3.5" drive case. This matched a perforation in the anti-static bag that the drive had been shipped in.

As a double check I bought a good quality drive dock and connected via USB - with the same result. Meanwhile other drives worked fine in the caddy and the dock.

I returned the unit, but the reseller is quibbling about it. Apparently it works fine on their machine and they object to the marker pen, claiming that constitutes damage and conveniently ignoring the gash in the drive! The issue's now with Amazon for arbitration.
---

-G

[dave]