FORMAT ERROR DISC

[CARTHALAWN]

Hi Folks

I recently purchased a new Sony MZ-RH1 minidisc (EUROPEAN)unit plus two new Sony Hi MD minidiscs.

Unit works fine with my old standard Minidiscs but when using the Hi MD discs,it kepps seeking and then eventually gives up and gives error"FORMAT ERROR DISC"

Also how do you get into service mode on a European unit.

Any ideas..would gretly appreciate?

[Strungup]

Hi Folks

I recently purchased a new Sony MZ-RH1 minidisc (EUROPEAN)unit plus two new Sony Hi MD minidiscs.

Unit works fine with my old standard Minidiscs but when using the Hi MD discs,it kepps seeking and then eventually gives up and gives error"FORMAT ERROR DISC"

Also how do you get into service mode on a European unit.

Any ideas..would gretly appreciate?

Are you sure they were NEW discs ? if they werent sealed , they werent new , upon occasion the format error happens in HiMD mode , try reformatting the HiMD disc then record something on it , You go into the menu to do that

[1kyle]

Try formatting the disc in ' Data Mode' first. Then just write some windows files to it with Windows Explorer.

If that works then re-initialize the disc for music with SB (simple Burner). Ensure of course that you are in HI-MD mode.

cheers

-K

[sfbp]

Hahaha I think they are both right, your unit was trying to access this disk in NetMD mode, reset the default to HiMD. Menu->Options->Disc Mode. (NOT the Record Mode, which is a separate thingy).

I think something like this happened to me exactly once.

When you hear that endless seeking, it's probably a great idea to stop the machine doing anything at all. I actually ended up pulling out the battery. It was a "regular" disk, so then I took it over to the deck, where I erased all the tracks from it. Can't do that on a 1GB disc, can we?

Kyle's idea of writing something random to it that is not music sounds just the ticket.

Which reminds me, Kyle, maybe it's time to dig into that whole issue......

Stephen

[CARTHALAWN]

thanks all for your response.

i`ll try something based on your advise

cheers!

[Sony_Fan]

Try this:

Connect the RH1 to your computer. using windows explorer, do a full format of the disc. The full format completely wipes out everything on the disc to a "new" state. Then using simple burner reformat the disc to Hi-MD.

[1kyle]

Which reminds me, Kyle, maybe it's time to dig into that whole issue......

Stephen

Hi there

I think the pot has gone off the boil on this one now as I use a Squeezebox Duet (which has optical out amongst others) to audio stream music to where I want it.

The squeezebox handles Native FLAC files as well as loads of others so if i want a new MD I just create it in real time whilst listening on decent equipment. Optical out on the squeezebox receiver to optical in on the appropriate device works just fine.

Quality is perfect.

I have 4 receivers -- it's a really easy way of getting high quality music to where you need it --especially AWAY from sitting at a computer.

Quality transferred into the audio equipment seems to me just as good as the original CD / MD.

(I still of course often use MD's as MD's tend to have my own compilations whereas in the FLAC library I have the music stored in "Albums" or original CD titles.)

As for making MD's in non real time I find making a "Virtual" CD on the computer from the flac files and burning with SB does the trick just fine. I run this on Linux using a Windows XP pro virtual machine -- no fuss -- vista proof (Vista doesn't support SB anyway) and if I need SS then I just do what I need with SS and delete from the SS library -- I don't use SS library any more.

Incidentally ripping your CD's to FLAC with something like Winamp adds all the metadata / tags so you've got all the track info (at least 99% of the time).

In any case if you make a Virtual CD --it's an identical copy of the original CD then SB will look up in the gracenote CDDB so you don't have to edit the track info.

Whilst this system is obviously not as quick / fast as pure drag 'n drop it works conveniently for me and is reasonably "future proof".

Cheers

-K

Edited August 24, 2008 by 1kyle