Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Arts Alliance TMS cannot see HDD

This is topic Arts Alliance TMS cannot see HDD in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Ian Freer (Member # 1940) on 02-18-2014, 11:32 PM:

Hi

I have formatted up some 2TB HDD's to make some compilation DCP drives for a film festival. The drives are EXT formatted and can be seen by Dolby, Doremi and GDC servers and by Cinedigm TCC TMS.

Today I tested them in an Arts Alliance TMS. This TMS has a 4-bay CRU unit. I had 3 HDD's with me. I plugged the first one in, and it successfully mounted and scanned and I ingested a short clip from it to the LMS. Second one, mounted and scanned no problem (there was nothing short to test ingest). Third one though, didn't show up. I then swapped the second and third to confirm it wasn't a faulty CRU bay. Then neither would show up.
I then swapped all three drives around and now none of them show up.
I took my 3 HDD's to another AA TMS site and they just didn't show up at all.
After this I re-checked them in Dolby and Doremi servers and a Cinedigm TMS and all OK.

Now, I know some TMS's can be pretty picky, the Cinedigm doesn't like some drives that get read fine by servers, but I'm confused by the fact that upon first insert to AA TMS 2 of the drives were good, but on subsequent inserts they just didn't show up.

Has anyone experienced similar issues?

Cheers,
Ian

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 02-19-2014, 07:49 PM:

Maybe a driver lock-up or SATA hotplug issue. Were you able/allowed to restart/reboot the TMS machine?

- Carsten

Posted by Ian Freer (Member # 1940) on 02-20-2014, 01:34 AM:

Hi Carsten

I didn't venture to a reboot yet, I didn't have a lot of time and I don't think the cinema is too keen on that at short notice.

I spoke to another tech more familiar with AA and he suggested sometimes they can have issues mounting drives, or at least sometimes they don't dismount a drive correctly so when you re-insert it, it never though it was taken out so doesn't re-mount properly. Or at least that's what I understood him to be saying.
I guess as they are 2TB drives this could add to the complexity as they take a lot longer to scan, but I was reasonably patient, leaving them several minutes.

He did suggest a reboot of the TMS may sort it, so I'll ask one of the two local AA sites if they will try that at some stage.

Interestingly, I sent the same 3 HDD's off to the first Festival site yesterday with a warning saying they may have to USB ingest (Doremi 3U chassis), but they reported back that their AA TMS could read them just fine... So I'm doing something right, haha

I know I shouldn't be surprised by these situation with d-Cinema these days, but...

Cheers,
Ian

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 02-20-2014, 06:04 AM:

USB natively supports hot-plugging. With CRU/SATA, it depends a bit on hardware and software combo. And yes, it is quite common that a reinsert is not detected on systems that have not been setup explicitly to do so. Which would of course be stupid for a TMS. It's a common problem using SATA/E-SATA for removable drives. Safest thing is a reboot.

- Carsten