Alesis HD24: Hard Drives ::: The Jumper Mystery Continues!

M

Morgan Chambers

Freshman
Jan 8, 2016
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Bend Oregon
soundcloud.com
Hi Guys, long time HD24 user. Having many songs, my Hard Drive log is large. Hard Drive Storage 001.jpg
After filling up 10 hard drives I ceased buying new caddy's as they seem to have become ridiculously expensive
and now use "drive boxes" Hard Drive Storage 002.jpgfrom eBay and simply add new blank hard drives to my existing caddy fleet!

Most of my drives are Maxtor but I recently purchased 2 new Hitachi Deskstar drives and now having major "jumper" issues!
I have done lots of online research and it seems the Maxtors are generally considered the best choice (or possibly only choice)
for the HD24! My question is what's the big mystery with the jumpers. My existing drives look like this.. Maxtor HD jumper setup.jpg
but the Hitachi drives have a white colored jumpers ..Hitachi Deskstar jumpers.jpg and do not have whatever that is going on with the single pin on the right side
of the Maxtors???
I understand the "slave/master" conversation but the new Hitachi drives simply will not load. Normally the machine asks if you
want to format and completely erase new drive etc but the Hitachi drives just start loading, go to around 70% then begin an annoying
clicking sound and eventually dismount and display error message "check jumper" which again, I have read about on several forums.
I have tried every config to get the new drives to work but always end up with the same jumper issues.
Does anyone know if these drives are going to be useful or should I just stick with the Maxtor. Just ordered another Maxtor so will see..
 
Re: Alesis HD24: Hard Drives ::: The Jumper Mystery Continues!

Hi Morgan,

What size are the new drives vs old? I've only ever used a HD24 once, and many years ago, but given the age of the design, I'd imagine there's a limitation as to the drive capacity it can support. Then again, you'd struggle to find a particularly high-capacity IDE hard drive anyway!

You do already have the jumpers set correctly on the Hitachi drive photo (master). You could try them in cable select mode, where the host effectively decides - so you'd move the jumper nearest the IDE connector one step to the right (i.e. one step nearer the power connector), and leave the other jumper as-is. The other combinations just relate to various modes to enhance compatibility with older systems (and none will be of any use to you, as they'll limit the usable capacity too much).

Failing that... any firmware updates for the HD24?
 
Re: Alesis HD24: Hard Drives ::: The Jumper Mystery Continues!

Hi Dan & thanks for the post. Never even knew the firmware could be updated but that kind of operation generally does not go well for me for some reason.
The sizes on both are 60 and I have Maxtors I've been successfully using that size and even larger so it's just very puzzling. I'll keep working on it..
 
Re: Alesis HD24: Hard Drives ::: The Jumper Mystery Continues!

Can you show what the existing drive's jumper settings represent?

For the Hitachi, try the Cable Select setting.
 
Re: Alesis HD24: Hard Drives ::: The Jumper Mystery Continues!

I had an HD24 right after they first came out years ago, it worked well just didn't use it enough so I sold it to buy a mixer.
As for the drive caddys I found some aftermarket caddys from Star Tech that worked perfect for far less cost than the Alesis originals. I can't remember the model number but they came with the complete drawer assembly and I just used the drive caddy, they cost something like $15 each back then.

You can update the firmware on the HD24, I did mine back then. At that time you downloaded the file in a midi file format and used a midi data file player or sequencer to load the update to the HD24. There were a couple of steps needed to put the HD24 into the update mode.
 
Re: Alesis HD24: Hard Drives ::: The Jumper Mystery Continues!

Reading up on the information out there, some say that certain units won't work with drives over 37gig (that's a known hardware issue on really old PCs), others say that you need to pull all jumpers off the drives (make sure they're in CS mode, not Master or Slave), still others say you have to check the controller cards in the HD24 and replace them if they're the old ones, and then some say you need to update the firmware on the HD24 or that there's some drives that just don't work no matter what.
And then there's those who say that they just use any old drive and it just works without paying attention to anything.

So... accurate information is hard to find on these units, unless you supposedly go to the right place, the Yahoo HD24 User's group. You should really join.
 
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Re: Alesis HD24: Hard Drives ::: The Jumper Mystery Continues!

Jumper settings are NOT standardized across vendors, so you really need to read the instructions that call out what jumper positions correspond to what settings. In your case, the Maxtor drive that functions correctly is in "Cable Select" mode (which logically makes sense, as it allows for the HD24 to have a single IDE controller for both bays). Your Hitachi drive is currently set to "Master" mode. You need to put your Hitachi drive into "Cable Select" mode. I'd probably do that by oving the left-hand jumper one space to the right (using the "16 Heads" setting)
 
Hi y'all, it's been about 7 years since this post was last responded to... sorry. I used to run the adats when they came on the scene, the MCI JH was just too expensive to keep up to snuff,... so the adats ended up being, a pain for me, and I've been jumping (no pun intended) formats ever since, just got this HD24 because every review said built like a tank, never fails, lol, ok, well, just got this one in (supposedly never used, "sat in a rack/never used", got it, plugged it in and I got the jumpers error, (check jumpers) otherwise the HD in Slot 1 will start de-installing at about 80+/-%. Pretty dismal and so I looked into what's going on via several different forums,.. different statements are made and not sure which one applies to my situation but I was desperate and took the drive out of 1, put it in 2 and it loaded in a flash. So,....? Not sure where I'm going with this. It loaded in a few seconds as opposed to drive 1 taking a minute before draining itself with the Jumper error. If it were a power supply thing, I would think that drive wouldn't work in drive b. Wow, how many can still be using this unit if it's been 7 years since this thread was on. Thanks
 
I bought a used Alesis HD24 with two original caddies and their drives. The machine would not mount either drive, no matter what I did: setting jumpers. Got two NOS drives but they wouldn't mount either. Got frustrated and bought a second Alesis HD24. Upon arrival (again with two original caddies), this second machines proved flawless. Both drives mounted properly as supplied. Sticking the two caddies from the second (working) machine into the first HD24 revealed that the (first) machine suddenly performed flawlessly. I swapped drives into caddies back and forth and concluded that A) all drives were ok; B) both machines worked perfectly; and C) both caddies supplied with the first machine were in fact defective.
This is strange: the caddies have no electronics and just deliver power (checked and is OK) to the drive inside and connect (wire) the drive to the connector (receptacle) inside the HD24. Also, how can two caddies be bad?
Anyway, cleaned the caddy contacts to no avail. Have given up and will now buy two NOS replacement caddies. The upside of this is that I now own two properly working HD24s.
 
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