1GB Hi-MD Recording:access Error And Silent Tracks

[xispe]

Recently i started to report a few errors in recordings made in my one and only 1GB Hi-MD. I was about to go nuts, since it is the only 1gb disc that i have and here in Portugal, there are still no signs of them .

These errors are easy to detect. Some tracks are in full silence when played back on the unit, or there are certain parts of the track where the unit just stops for a bit, and advances 2 seconds in silence. Playing back a track with these errors in SonicStage gives a different result: ACCESS ERROR is displayed in the unit, and the software kind of... hangs around in there for a minute or so (the usual thing.. )

The thing is that i've made a custom cool looking stand for the minidisc:

(looks cool doesn't it ?)

What in fact i've realised is that when i record the 1gb disc in the stand at that position, it's more likely to have errors in the disc. I think that these units, although they are portable, were ment to record in an horizontal plane, like the top of a desk. Apparently when i'm recording in an horizontal plane everything goes well...

This weekend i'm going to make further experiments recording outside the stand, and tell you how thing go.

Meanwhile i can still use the stand for playing back

Edited February 6, 2005 by xispe

[ROMBUSTERS]

interesting experimentation there! and i guess your hypothesis makes sense as well. while the disc is spinning it is throwing itself off kilter when not on a horizontal plane.

[uglor]

i get the same problem, but i always lay my minidisc recorder (mznh900) flat on my desk. i bought about 25 hi mds, and opened 6. two of these six give me errors similar to the one you are experiencing. when recording, everything will go smooth, but when i play the recorded material, the track plays, but no sound comes out. playing it thru my pc, i get an error. i can reformat the whole disc, then record over, and about 50-60% of the time the same thing will happened, at around the same area of the minidisc (near the end, at last 150 megabytes or so, depending upon which of the two problem hi-md discs i use). the other 4 himd mindiscs, i can reformat and fill it up over and over again with no problems. maybe some hi-md discs are defective?

Recently i started to report a few errors in recordings made in my one and only 1GB Hi-MD. I was about to go nuts, since it is the only 1gb disc that i have and here in Portugal, there are still no signs of them .

These errors are easy to detect. Some tracks are in full silence when played back on the unit, or there are certain parts of the track where the unit just stops for a bit, and advances 2 seconds in silence. Playing back a track with these errors in SonicStage gives a different result: ACCESS ERROR is displayed in the unit, and the software kind of... hangs around in there for a minute or so (the usual thing.. )

The thing is that i've made a custom cool looking stand for the minidisc:

(looks cool doesn't it ?) 

What in fact i've realised is that when i record the 1gb disc in the stand at that position, it's more likely to have errors in the disc. I think that these units, although they are portable, were ment to record in an horizontal plane, like the top of a desk. Apparently when i'm recording in an horizontal plane everything goes well...

This weekend i'm going to make further experiments recording outside the stand, and tell you how thing go.

Meanwhile i can still use the stand for playing back

←

[xispe]

my errors occurred also in the end part of the minidisc... don't tell me that there are defective hi-md disks...

i should have learn with all disc related problems that my r70 had before investing more money in minidisc technology... DAMN!

Yeah your right, at the time i'm writing this i noticed a 2 second gap again almost at the end of the disc... So there goes my theory down the drain, and i'm nuts again!

[xispe]

ok, my only 1gb disc is malfunctioning above the 700 mb mark... very nice! I'm about to trash it...

I'm not going to spend more money with this, i'm getting kind of tired!

[Christopher]

Have you tried formatting the disc via the menu on the unit?

[xispe]

yes, i've about tried everything:

- formatting the disc via the menu

- formatting in windows explorer in fat

- formatting in windows explorer in fat32

...

I've also tried to fill up the 1gb with a zip file. copying goes ok, but the problems occur when i try to read the file back from the MD. Near the end, windows just gives me an interesting error: "Path too deep"... And no file is copied. Meanwhile in the unit ACCESS ERROR flashes a few times.

I've tried to fill up the 1gb disc with PCM audio and transfer it back to sonic stage. Same thing happened: ACCESS ERROR and no transfered track in sonic stage.

Another thing: i've already opened the shutter of the hi-md disk and looked all around the disk for anything that might be lying above the disc in a specific area, and visualy I didn't found anythin:, no garbage, no scratches, no nothing.

[Christopher]

Does this happen when you record whilst not using the computer? If it's computer only, then reinstall Sonicstage or report back with what kind of system you've got.

[xispe]

I have the same problem with recordings done not using the computer. The 1Gb PCM test i've did was to record in realtime about 90 minutes of the sound of me playing Half-Life 2 (-> nice game <-). So it was recorded using the unit itself...therefore i think this is really a disc problem.

What is haunting me is that another user reported disc problems above the 700 mb mark...

[MDfreak]

Today I got a 5 pack of 1 GB discs and the first disc I opened appears to have this problem to. I copied 3 zip-files of about 800 MB total. No problem, but because it are important backup-files I tried to copy them back to my HD to check if all data is copied correctly to the disc.

When copying back I get an error from Windows Explorer stating "invalid file parameter". In the display of my Hi-MD I see "ACCESS ERROR".

It happens almost every time at the same place on the disc.

My original disc that I got with my NH700 has no problem and the second disc of my 5-pack seems to work okay too.

So what I would suggest is collecting the serial-numbers on the back of the faulty Hi-MD's. Maybe there is a patern or Sony can make up a patern (faulty production line or date of production?)

GOOD DISCS

4BAA1617E (came with my NH700)

4BAA1111F (2x)

BAD DISCS

4BAB162PE

Example of a disc serial number.

p.s. there can be more than 1 disc with the same number. Probably the date of production and plant/machine is encoded in it.

[xispe]

the serial number of my faulty one is:

4AAA1107E (it came with my nh700, in Portugal)

today i was thinking if this included disk is also covered by the warranty... If i have time during this week i'll talk to the guy at the sony store to see what to do...

This problem is very disturbing. Like this i won't even buy 1gb discs when they are available here in Portugal...

[MDfreak]

the serial number of my faulty one is:

4AAA1107E (it came with my nh700, in Portugal)

today i was thinking if this included disk is also covered by the warranty... If i have time during this week i'll talk to the guy at the sony store to see what to do...

This problem is very disturbing. Like this i won't even buy 1gb discs when they are available here in Portugal...

←

I quote the inlay of the disc:

Lifetime Limited Warranty

Sony Electronics Inc. or Sony of Canada Ltd. ("Sony") warrants this product ("Product") against defects in material or workmanship for its normal life. If Sony finds the prodct contains any such defect, Sony will either replace the product at no charge or refund the purchase price shown on your receipt. ......

Hmm, this lets me think the discs I now have are imported from the US. That would be quite possible because the discs are not available in sufficient numbers in the whole of Europe.

But as the inlay states, you have warrenty againt production faults and because the disc came new out of the box and immediately generated this problem Sony must replace the disc (maybe contact Sony Portugal in your case, I will try Sony Netherlands).

[uglor]

serials numbers of problem Himds:

4AAA1915E

4AAA1705E

[MDfreak]

Today I tried to find out more about my damaged disc. So I created a textfile of exactly 1 MB (1024 KB). This textfile I renamed and copied 692 times with a batch-file to get enough data to fill the disc. I also created a checksum from the data and found a free md5 checksum-checker.

I all included this is the following zip-file:

http://www.mdcenter.nl/download/himd_disc_test.zip (less than 300 KB)

I also wrote some instructions on how to use this all.

Now the bad news. When I wanted to test if the checksum fails everything went well (also copying all data back to the PC), so it appears that after a couple of times (4 to 5) formatting the disc with SonicStage and filling up the disc with data it works fine. So I cannot test any further for the problem.

Hopefully someone else can test its faulty discs to find out which part of the disc is damaged.

Because the testdata I created consists of 1 MB files you can easily find out where on the disc the bad part is because the files are numbered according to the position where they will end up when you put them on a freshly formatted disc.

Hopefully the checksum tells you not only the first file where the trouble starts but exactly which MB's of the Hi-MD are bad.

To end this post: I'm a happy user because my discs seems to work fine now. Sadly I cannot do any further research on this problem, hopefully you can.

[Syrius]

You know, even though they are locked, lint sometimes get inside of my discs. Try using some of that tissue for camera lenses if you find anything that may be preventing the laser from reading. It has happened with pretty much every brand of disc I have. Memorex, Sony, Maxell, TDK, Fuji, Denon. Dirt doesn't respect names.

[ROMBUSTERS]

perhaps because the HiMD is still very new they are still working out the bugs in the production system. Here is my thought of the moment:

The disc appears file and works until the very last portion of the disc is accessed. Because the HiMD uses a smart data writing system it *should* jump over areas that it detects errors on (especially during the write sequence). Therefore it is possible that the HiMD *smartly* avoided all of the damaged sectors of the disc until the very end when it had no other choice per say.

By the way could those having problems with their discs post their location and the location from which they bought the discs.

[grf]

Hi,

Just reading the discussion on the HiMD having errors when recording and here is my experience which may shed light on what is happening.

I recorded 5 CD's to Hi MD 1Gb using Hi MD LP mode using Simple Burn on an Mz-NH900. Nearly all played perfectly but CD No3 started producing errors on the last 5 of the CD tracks i.e roughly in the middle of the MD. It sounded like a CD when its producing errors making clicks at the rotation rate. I deleted the whole CD (group) and then recorded it once more using Simple Burn. This time the same CD and the same tracks produced a humming broken up at the (MD?) rotation rate; a similar set of errors.

I then deleted all of the tracks using the hi mD player edit controls and re-recorded the offending CD completely as an analogue input to the Hi MD recorder. I used SBurner to copy and paste the track and artist info from the CD to the new MD tracks (nice trick).

The Re-recorded CD plays perfectly ! This leads me to tthink that the Hi MD writing mechanism could be sensitive to the *rate* at which the data is written as the audio data would be written more slowly (greater gaps between writes0 than with SBurner.

Anybody any ideas ?

Best regards

Graham

[MDfreak]

You know, even though they are locked, lint sometimes get inside of my discs. Try using some of that tissue for camera lenses if you find anything that may be preventing the laser from reading. It has happened with pretty much every brand of disc I have. Memorex, Sony, Maxell, TDK, Fuji, Denon. Dirt doesn't respect names.

←

I can check if there is dirt on the disc but this I don't think because we are talking about discs that came right out of shop and are brand new.

[xispe]

I've tested copying all the 900 and something files and from file 711 an error occurred: "Cannot copy, path is too deep" . After that i've tried to copy again that file, and the same error.

As it's giving errors on copy, i didn't even tried checking the md5 of those files...

Then i formatted the disc using the windows explorer (FAT), there was another error, saying that windows couldn't format the drive, and ACCESS ERROR displayed on the screen of my nh700.

I reformatted again, and it seemed to work out. No windows error and no ACCESS ERROR on the unit

Then i disconnected the unit from the computer, plugging out the USB cord. Reformatted the disc using the unit it self, and filled up the disc with PCM silence in realtime. I've set the timemark to add trackmarks in each minute. After 95 minutes or so of recording, i had 95 tracks.

The ideia was to transfer back those tracks to sonicstage and figure out which ones were damaged. From track 71 till 95 all the tracks are damaged. COOL ISN'T IT?! My one and only hi-md disc is damaged from the 700 mb mark. Nice!

I'm glad it worked!

[xispe]

ahahahah! guess what!?

I went to the store where i've bought my nh700 and told the guy that my disc was with problems, and asked if the 2-year warranty plan would replace it. The guy just answered:

"Those kinds of media are not covered by any warranty. The warranty is only for your unit. Although the disc shipped with your unit, the disc is not included"

BAHHAHAHHAHAH!

So no warranty for the media right ? So you won't get me buying any hi-md disc, or spending any more money with this. :|

[mini_disc_player]

serials numbers of problem Himds:

4AAA1915E

4AAA1705E

←

Does this mean that these HIMD's can't hold data files?

[Guest tony wong]

ahahahah! guess what!?

I went to the store where i've bought my nh700 and told the guy that my disc was with problems, and asked if the 2-year warranty plan would replace it. The guy just answered:

"Those kinds of media are not covered by any warranty. The warranty is only for your unit. Although the disc shipped with your unit, the disc is not included"

BAHHAHAHHAHAH!

So no warranty for the media right ? So you won't get me buying any hi-md disc, or spending any more money with this. :|

←

if your player have Sony warranty?

if yes, just send them for checking

disk may not include in warranty, but

the malfunctioning of some critical function sure lies in the area of warranty no matter what the dealer say on their mouth

no one can deny the responsibility

u buy a Hi-MD and u found it cannot work well with a Hi-MD disk.....

shall u be satisfied with this?

personal guess:

1. ur player may have problem

2. the design of this model may have problem(probably the stand)

well I can tell u, if by the end u still have that problem

it is very likely that u can seek for an exchange to other model

yes, it is very likely to happen if u r dealing with Sony

[xispe]

the only problem is that in Portugal there are no signs of 1gb discs. So, i'll just have to keep the testing for some day later... after all i have two years of warranty to test it. :\

[MDfreak]

Does this mean that these HIMD's can't hold data files?

←

I don't think you have any idea where this topic is about.

As for getting warrenty on the defect discs.... call Sony, not your reseller. They always want to do as little as possible.

For portugal (although I don't understand the language):

Contacte-nos em:

Av. do Mediterrâneo

Edifício Sony

Parque das Nações

1990 – 156 Lisboa

ou através de

Telefone: 808 200 185

Telemovel:965 989 999

Mail: cic.portugal@eu.sony.com

[xispe]

yes, thank you. I know where it is It's in a very nice place in Lisbon, where expo98 was. A nice place to walk with the girlfriend in the weekend

[grf]

Hi,

Having looked at the responses from people who are also having problems with the reliability of the Hi Md Disc Media I have opened a call with Sony UK on this problem.

The call is with Sony UK and the Case Number is 140981444.

Please log as many genuine faults on the Hi Md problem to Sony using this number, you might have to specify that it is with Sony UK.

We might at least alert the company to the level of the reliability failures.

There is also a link to their digital audio page which might get a topic added into the faq if we persist.

http://www.sonydigital-link.com/DNA/HiMD/himd.asp?l=en

best regards

GRF

[MDfreak]

Hi,

Having looked at the responses from people who are also having problems with the reliability of the Hi Md Disc Media I have opened a call with Sony UK on this problem.

The call is with Sony UK and the Case Number is 140981444.

Please log as many genuine faults on the Hi Md problem to Sony using this number, you might have to specify that it is with Sony UK.

We might at least alert the company to the level of the reliability failures.

There is also a link to their digital audio page which might get a topic added into the faq if we persist.

http://www.sonydigital-link.com/DNA/HiMD/himd.asp?l=en

best regards

GRF

←

Do we have to call Sony UK or can we also post our findings via e-mail?

[grf]

Do we have to call Sony UK or can we also post our findings via e-mail?

←

Hi,

I searched but could not find an email address that looked appropriate so I phoned them instead. The man/boy who answered at Sony took a lively interest in the complaint and I was able to explain more by phone than a great long email. I reminded him about this list (he knew it) and said that he could gather more data about failed Hi MD disks from here.

It was certainly worth a call.

Best regards

Graham

[Woodgnome]

The errors you quote are not unique to your player or 1Gb blanks. They are in fact a fault of using Hi-SP or Hi-LP with 1Gb or normal (80minute) MDs.

After recording say a 15 minute track, and dividing it acurately into 3 tracks. Erasing track two and removing T-Mark between track 1 and 3 should result in a shorter track with the middle portion cut out. Been doing this kind of editing for years with normal MD.

Do it with Hi-LP - first thing is the resulting edits move - and then the disk will normally display "cannot play or record tracks" before blanking disks. Repaeated this now many times and lost too many valuable recordings I did over the Christmas period. We need Sony to recall these faulty players

IT IS NOT THE MEDIA - although I have noticed an increasing amount of babdly manufactured discs (holes in the silvered media) but that's a different discussion and not causing the problems here.

Recently i started to report a few errors in recordings made in my one and only 1GB Hi-MD. I was about to go nuts, since it is the only 1gb disc that i have and here in Portugal, there are still no signs of them .

These errors are easy to detect. Some tracks are in full silence when played back on the unit, or there are certain parts of the track where the unit just stops for a bit, and advances 2 seconds in silence. Playing back a track with these errors in SonicStage gives a different result: ACCESS ERROR is displayed in the unit, and the software kind of... hangs around in there for a minute or so (the usual thing.. )

[grf]

Hi,

Just read te post on errors during the editing of tracks.

I think that there are TWO types of fault going on here and we should be careful not to confuse the two.

I can well believe that there is a 'firmware' bug in the NH900 or other similar Hi MD recorder/players which refuses to play an edited track. There were similar faults on the early Sony 4 Track recorders but I am sure that this fault is not related to that early bug.

There is another problem with the reliability of the Hi MD media and this exhibits itself independently of editing action and varies from disk to disk.

The best way forward on both of these faults is to log on this forum the batch numbers (they only have batch numbers) of disks that exhibit a media fault (silence or skipping) and then seperately serial numbers of recorder/players with editing problems.

Both of these should also be reported to Sony through their help line (telephone only ?) but as seperate cases and with a pointer to additional info and fault descriptions pointing back to these pages.

Very best regards

Graham

[dave_bass5]

Mine is 4BAA1135E that came with my 900 and im getting the same error. ive got about 200mb left on the disc. Its more random though as sometimes it will play sometimes it wont.

Had it since early sept 2004.

this is the first time its been this full but i have a couple i got from Audiocubes that seem ok

Dave.

[grf]

Hi,

Just a few furthher thoughhts on this topic.

The disk batch number I had problems with was

4BAA1827E

As I said in my previous mail I could eventually record over the same bad track area in analogue mode, so I think that faulty writes are close to thhe write limit tolerance in some way.

One thing we could try is to attach the faulty Hi MD disk as a windows drive and then run the system utility disk cheecking programme and see if it can spot te same read/write errors. I wil do this when I get another faulty disk.

Best regards

Graham

[xispe]

yes.. my errors are also kind of random. Sometimes everything is well, others not really. Hey but this is cool right ?

The thing is that i'm having a work meeting in a few weeks, and maybe.. i would like to record the audio from that meeting...

No the big question:

Will i use my minidisc recorder ?? ahahhahaha! Will i use my one and only 1gb minidisc ?? NOT... Maybe i can use a reformatted 80 minute disc.. but with so many troubles who knows... i'm not confident enough to use this. I'll just leave the minidisc at home, and pickup some tape recorder to record the meeting! THAT WOULD BE PRETTY COOL!

[cfairfowl]

I have 11 HiMDs and I too have encountered a silent section on a track recorded from DAB radio. It is possible that the DAB program (Late Junction BBC Radio 3) cut out for a few seconds. It is also possible that HiMD is not quite ready maybe before it’s time i.e. the technology is not ready yet. Maybe in a few years time this problem will be overcome if indeed it is an inherent problem with the technology. In the absence of a HIMD deck with timer switch I have spent good money having an automatic recording cradle made for my MZ-NH700 and it is almost finished. This will operate the NH700 using a timer to record programs from DAB, if this recording error is an inherent problem maybe I am wasting my money?

[xispe]

Guess what!? It seems that 1gb discs are finally available in my area, and i've got 5!

Now i was listening to one of the new ones.. and the sound skipped! Another damaged disc.! I give up!

[me]

Guess what!? It seems that 1gb discs are finally available in my area, and i've got 5!

Now i was listening to one of the new ones.. and the sound skipped!          Another damaged disc.! I give up!

←

Maybe it's a damaged player? Try another. Surely you could convince them if it's skipping on two discs then it's the fault of the player not hte media?

[peare]

Maybe it's a damaged player? Try another. Surely you could convince them if it's skipping on two discs then it's the fault of the player not hte media?

←

As I have written to another topic recently 1 of my 1 gig disc is defective. I recorded a concert and while messing with a track mark it deleted everything but the 1st track... then it didnt come out of my NH1, then I noticed that the metal part was slided down and hadnt come up, then it gave all kinds of errors, tried to write some system files but was unsuccessful. I suspected my NH1, but that specific disc gave a C15 error on my deck, instead of displaying HI-MD Disc message. Then all of a sudden, after I have burnt some music to other MD's, it magically started to work again. I really dont know whether to rely on this disc or not.

It's code is: 4DAA170SE

[xispe]

Just to add that i've found more tracks with problems...

[daremo]

I had my first problem last night. Listening to a Hi-MD disc with recordings made from SS in LP2 and several tracks had silence right in the middle of them. Going to try and reformat the disc and see what happens. Batch number is:4AAA132PE

[sebastianbf]

I use to have the same problem with five 1gb discs in my mznh900. I didn't have that problem using "normal discs". So I sent the unit for an exchange. It will arrive in one week so I will record in the same 1gb discs and see what happen. I will post my results.