hard disk overload on brand new machine

marsh · Post by **marsh** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 1:00 am

Hi Guys,

I've just built a new PC with a 7200 RPM 500GB HD, but Live is showing the Hard Disk Overload Indicator peaking out most of the time... Also, I'm having serious instability problems with Sample based ROMplers like NI Akoustik Piano, and Kontakt whereby they just crash sometimes randomly, freeze live up, and send a buzz out of the soundcard. Anybody experienced this problem before/have any idea what it may stem from? Another Issue I'm having which I'm not sure is related, is that my firewire connection to my soundcard (Saffire LE) seems to drop out occaisionally and I need to restart the machine to restore it. My friend seems to think that that ASUS MOBO (P5QL-EM) that I chose has a dodgy VIA 1394 chipset on it which might be the problem, so my nest step is to try a PCI fireware card with a different chipset.

Any ideas on what the problem might be would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

Oh, here's the main info on the system:

Live 7.0.14 | NI Komplete 5 (updated to very latest versions via NISC) | ASUS P5QL-EM | Intel E8500 | 4gb DDR2 1066 Kingston DRAM | 500GB WD 7200rpm HD | Focusrite Saffire LE

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 9:27 am

Hi. I don't have much in common with your system, but I did recently build my quad with an ASUS P5Q-Pro Mobo. I did indeed disable the on board FW chip in the Bios, and install a PCI FW card. I did this because of the IRQ address sharing and problems I was having with my Alesis iO/14 FW sound card. In the end, the culprit for ALL of my troubles was the 9400 GeForce Nvidia graphic card. Although I did not have HD overload problems, I had poor audio, lots of drop outs and just plain irregular problems. Using the DPC Latency tool I had large spikes with no rhyme or reason.

What OS are you running? I am on XP pro SP3.

What graphics card?

marsh · Post by **marsh** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:47 am

Thanks for the reply

I'm on Vista SP1, which I don't believe to be the problem, because as much as everyone disses it, I have a couple of friends who are running it flawlessly. I'm actually using the onboard graphics as I built this machine purely for Audio so didn't see the need for a fancy graphics card.

The funny thing is that the disk overload light flashing doesn't audibly effect the audio, but the sample based instruments just die very badly which makes me think it's hard rive related.. although, I've just bought a PCI FW card I'll see if that changes anything.

Ahhh, the joys of PC debugging!...