Any recommendation for stable external hard drives for multi track recording on the qu16?
Thanks in advance
perfect…thanks very much
I got the Seagate Backup plus 1TB drive. The 500GB version is listed as tested. I haven’t had any problems with the 1TB version yet. I’ve recorded 1 full rehearsal (2 hours) and about 13 small testing clips, anywhere from 1 minute to 40 minutes.
A&H has recommended formatting before each recording session. I haven’t done that yet, but haven’t had any problems.
From the A&H recommended drives, I have two Samsung M3 500G drives that work perfectly in the Qu-drive. The supplied cables are a bit short, though.
Its a shame that all tracks are recorded and not just those that have content, but hey… what a feature!
I use a Samsung M3 portable 1TB drive and the cable is a little short but now I have my QU-16 in a Studiospares mixer rack case the drive just hangs down the side of the mixer in the case - just don’t put the mixer down with it still there! I love the fact it records everything since I don’t have to think about it apart from arming and pressing play and since it works as an insert on each channel I can set the gains correctly for recording and then the faders set the FOH level. Excellent.
Just got the Samsung M3 this week and it tested fine so all set up to record this weekends gig. When recording multitrack, at what point of the signal path is it tapped off to the Qu drive…?, preEQ, prefade, etc?? (or selectable?) Be nice to have some ‘raw’ data to play around with in the DAW.
Also, did you need to update your firmware on the M3 or just plug n play? Just tried searching for a firmware update but to no avail!!
Just ordered a Seagate Backup Plus based on this thread. Thanks for the info.
Drew
I got a 1TB Backup Plus, and I find it takes a seemingly very long time for it to read, to format, and to save to a 1 TB drive. Few sessions are larger than 30 - 50 gigs anyway, and the 500s are no longer available. So, I have an old 60G Seagate Momentus that is in a simple YSB case, and it works fine, if a little small, only one show at a time on it. I have a 320G Apple/Hitachi out of my laptop that works fine is a $14 Rosewill case, and my best option is I bought a 250G Seagate and put it in a case that has USB2 and Firewire 800, so I get speedier downloads to my Mac.
The peculiar thing about this drive is it works perfectly on USB power (I recorded it full to 8 hours overnight as a test) but if I plug in a 5V power supply, the drive is not recognized! No problem, as that means I don’t need to carry a PS for it, but it is strange.
Anyway I now have three drives for various gigs…
I recently got the recommended WD Elements Drive with 500G. It works perfectly so far and is as far as I know, at least in germany, the best value for money thing out of the recommended hard disks.
Regards,
Thomas
I also got a Western Digital Elements (1TB), and it seems to work well. You have to let the Qu-16 reformat the drive, because is it NTFS formatted out-of-the-box, and the Qu-16 only supports FAT32 formatted drives (as far as I know).
I tried a Verbatim Store’n’Go 500GB drive, which is FAT32 formatted already, but the Qu-16 didn’t recognize it, so that Verbatim drive won’t work.
Regards, Hans
I used 6 different hard disks but all not works well… My multitrack result got problems (cuts)… Please visit this forum page Qu-Drive Multitrack Recording with cuts - Qu Troubleshooting - Allen & Heath Digital Community Forums
Bought the WD 500gb, £40 - great value. Recorded last night and recording tonight, haven’t listened to them yet but fast to arm and format. Upgraded drive firmware too. Very neat little drive.
Anybody use the Seagate back up plus slim version?
I have the Seagate Expansion Portable USB power 1TB drive and it is not really working out with the QU… I did record a show with it and even though it took AGES – like over 60 secs for the drive to mount- it did work
But then QU just stopped recognising it… When checked it out with the DiskUtils om my mac it was saying that the FAT32 had boot sector issues… so I can’t trust it with my QU and its back to square 1.
I will say this-- I don’t think the USB power on (my) QU is all that good. I say this because I have a FAT32 formatted portable drive in an enclosure that I use to swap data around. It needs a bit of juice – on some machines it powers fine, on others it struggles but works and on some machines it will only run if I use a cable that takes extra power by using 2 USB ports on the machine. My QU gets nowhere near powering this up on a single USB.
Thanks- I will check out some of the drives listed above.
Andy
Thanks
I’m using a WD Elements 500GB disk (as listed in the A&H disk PDF). So far… all works well.
I went ahead and tried the Seagate Backup Plus Compact and it works good.
It seems like everybody with 1TB drives are seeing long seek or load times. I’m experiencing this too. However the recording is great.
I have several drives I use with my Qu. Some are old laptop drives I put in USB cases, but I have one excellent suggestion: USB is not always the fastest transfer method. I h=bought a Seagate 250G drive and put it in a, OWC external case that has rirewire 800 as well as USB2. Using FW 800 is much faster transferring the tracks to my Mac Pro! A 5400 RPM drive is fine, but the bottleneck for me is the USB connection. Maybe USB3 would be better, but my cases are mostly USB 2.
Just a user tip!
L
I got the Samsung M3 Portable 500GB USB3.0. Worked fine for a while, but after a month or so, the usb port started to lose connection, probably due to a broken/bad connection. Could anyone recommend a more durable option from the list below? Thanks!
Intenso model 6002510 USB2.0 320GB
Intenso model 6021560 USB3.0 1TB
Adata Superior SH93 500GB
LaCie Rugged Mini 500GB USB3.0
WD My Passport 500GB USB3.0
WD Elements 500GB USB3.0
Seagate Backup Plus 500GB USB3.0
Verbatim Store 'n Go 320GB USB2.0