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User manual for Cantar-X1 & X2 v2.15 2008 March 28
p.42
p.42
HDD (hard disk drive)
The Cantar HDD is a PATA/IDE 2.5”, 80GB disk running
at a low 5400rpm for minimum power consumption and
heat generation. If you replace it with a larger one, be
sure it doesn’t get too hot, and verify that the static electricity
grounding path between the disk housing and the Cantar
chassis is still within factory specs (120 k ohm, ± 20 k ohm).
The current trend is to choose 160GB/250GB disks. FAT32
can handle up to 2TB, but Microsoft lets it be ‘universal’
below 127GB only; Cantar formatting is thus limited to
this value. If you nevertheless want Cantar to exploit their
full capacity, format them as FAT32 with
Partition-Magic
http://www.symantec.com/norton/products/overview.
jsp?pcid=sp&pvid=pm80
installed in a Windows-XP PC,
and make
one primary
partition, not logical partitions.
note:
hot HDDs can become temperamental and trigger
‘Bus Hangs’; preferably use a 'cool' Firewire enclosure, such
as the G-Drive
http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-
DRIVE-mini.cfm.
If you suffer from connection problems with
LaCie
Drives
,
download the latest firmware from
http://www.lacie.
com/us/support/drivers/driver.htm?id=10053
SSD (solid state drive)
Less than half the power consumption of rotating HDDs,
SSDs are a must below -15°C, higher than 5,000m
altitude and very bumpy environments. The currently avail-
able
Samsung
32GB PATA MCAQE32G5APP-0XA and
Stec
ZEUS PATA 64GB 2.5" are compatible with Cantar’s
Firewire-to-PATA/IDE bridge, see pic.above. Because they
feature a built-in 'wear leveling' function which spreads the
workload to all memory cells (insuring the front cells are not
always under fire), SSDs are much more reliable than CF
cards which can’t survive the many read/write cycles that
audio recording requires.
CF (compact flash card)
Abandoned by digital cameras in favor of the less fragile
SD cards, CFs are on their way out. If you must use them,
connect a Sandisk SDDRX4-CF-901 to the Cantar FW sock-
et. Format them as FAT32 using Windows XP or Vista.
CD/DVD Burners
CD/DVD burners such as LiteOn tray SW431/ SW852S,
Pioneer tray DVRK14, NEC tray ND6500A (good burner,
but only accepts hard to find 8x DVDs) should be replaced
with the Panasonic-Matshita slot UJ-85J or UJ875 which
burn DVD-RAM and accept the latest 16x DVD±R.
Internal
To install or replace an internal CD/DVD burner,
see p.5. When Cantar abruptly goes to REC, the DVD-
RAM burner closes its unfinished idle-copy task and gener-
ates magnetic interference for a few seconds. That is why
it must carry an Aaton mu-metal shield plate (p.52).
note:
Setting TECHSET.01 to ‘
Unmount
’ opens access to the
Cantar DVD-RAM burner through the Firewire socket; this is
quite useful to edit metadata with a Mac.
External
Cantar determines whether an external burner is
Firewire connected, if it contains a blank disk and if the
internal burner is empty, it will choose the external burner
to run the backup.
CD/DVD Disks
never use supermarket branded media
CD-R
Made by Taiyo Yuden, Maxell ‘Pros’ are the best.
DVD±R
Ask the Post Production supervisor what is his
preferred flavor (+ or –). Taiyo Yuden 8x are the best but
difficult to find; to print labels, use their “Watershield” disks,
they are more water resistant than normal white printables.
Cantar burns all DVDs at 4x to improve their lifespan.
DVD-RAM
Panasonic 3x LM-AF-120LE.
CD/DVD Disk Handling
98% of all media failures are caused by poor handling. A
dirty DVD can still be played, but if it has nothing more than
fingerprints, it is unuseable for recording. Open your thumb
and index-finger in a U-shape and hold the blank disk by its
opposite edges. Do NOT clean an optical disk with a cloth in
a rotary motion (best way to destroy a complete track) but by
successive radial strokes.
DVD-RAM & the MAC
(see Majax Q/A p.51)
DVD-RAM disks are read-only on Macs, this prevents modifi-
cation of the file's metadata. To compensate for this infirmity,
install ‘
WriteUDF
’
http://www.softarch.com
and replace the
Mac ‘super-drive’ by a Matshita UJ-8xx, or buy a Panasonic
standalone burner. Or use the Cantar DVD-RAM burner in its
TECHSET.01 ‘
Unmount
’-ed state.
note:
SATA-IDE HDDs & SSDs will be available by Sept.
2008 with the Aaton made Firewire-to-SATA bridge.
Tutorial "Disks"
