Alesis ADAT-HD24 FirePort 1394, Reference Manual, Page: 50 / 102

chapter 5
ADAT HD24 Reference Manual
49
Working with Drives
Mounting and selecting a drive
One of the key strengths of the ADAT HD24 is its
easily-removable hard drives; in fact it was our
goal to make the drive caddies similar to ADAT
tapes in their transportability and low cost. Your
system becomes much more flexible when you add
additional drives. Without shutting down your
system, you can simply insert a drive and play or
record on it. You don't have to wait for a
download or a backup—it's available just as if it
were a tape. But there are certain drive modes you
need to understand: when and how a drive is
mounted and unmounted , and when it is selected .
Each of the two hard disk drive bays has an
associated
DRIVE
button that performs two major
functions: selecting the drive for use, and
preparing the drive for removal from the machine
(dismounting and power-down). Associated with
each drive select button is a two-color LED that
indicates the status of the hard drive. When this
LED is lit (either green or flashing red), the drive is
mounted . Mounting means that the system
recognizes the disk, has powered it up, and can
communicate with it.
Before you can pull out a drive, it must be
dismounted (DRIVE LED must be OFF).
Otherwise, you run the risk of a head crash
and losing data.
What happens when a drive mounts
When a drive gets mounted, if the drive contains
a valid ADAT FST™ format, the machine will
automatically enter Song Select mode and
attempt to select the most recently selected Song,
or Song 01. If there are no songs on the disk, the
display will indicate "
No Songs On
Disk
"—but all you have to do is press the NEW
SONG button and you're ready to record. If the
drive is not recognized as having the ADAT
FST™ format, the display will show "
Invalid
Format
", and you'll have to initialize the disk
(after making sure there's nothing valuable in
some other format on the disk).
Which drive is selected?
When you have hard disks mounted in both
drives, remember that just because a drive is
mounted and its LED is green doesn't mean the
HD24 is actively using it at any given moment.
Only one drive can be active or
selected at any
given time…you can't record or play back audio
on two different drives simultaneously.
The indicator for which drive is the currently-
selected drive is in the upper right hand corner of
the display:
In this display, Drive 2 is the active drive, and
there are 34 minutes of free space at the current
sample rate and track width. The HD FREE
SPACE indicator shows available recording time
in hours, minutes, or seconds, as indicated by an
“H”, “M”, or “S” to the right of the number.
HD FREE SPACE
34
2
M