FS-100 Freezing... a lot.
 

Hi guys,
I have two FS-100s and use them several times a week with my HVX-200s. I have upgraded one of them to v4 firmware and the other is still on v3. Both of them freeze more often than I would like. Sometimes they will freeze right after turning them on and other times they will freeze while recording a clip. There doesn't seem to be any sort of consistency with when and how they freeze. I have noticed that I get the best performance when I format and repair disk several times before a shoot. All of my shoots are typically in-studio on sticks so there isn't a whole lot of moving around and the firewire cable is very secure.

Any thoughts on what I can do to improve reliability? During every shoot I'm constantly eying the LCD to make sure it is still running. I'd love to be able to have more confidence in these boxes... maybe it's time to switch to P2?

Firestores do record their data to hard drives, and hard drives do eventually break down.... as i discovered recently with my firestore. I was having almost the exact same issues you described. The device would freeze up on me, sometimes shortly after I turned it on, sometimes after I had been recording for a while, and other times it wouldn't freeze at all. Sometimes it also just wouldn't record... it wouldn't be frozen, but it would refuse to record.

Good news though is that I was able to fix it. I pulled out the old hard drive and replaced it with a larger seagate drive with the same rpms, same power requirements, and same cache size. Since replacing the hard drive its been working like new, with no dependability issues whatsover. No more freezing, no more stopping recording or anything. Of course this new hard drive I stuck in there will eventually go bad too, and I will probably have to do it again... but for now its working great!

Thanks Adam. It's encouraging to hear that it can be fixed. My only thing is, these freezes have been happening on both units since they were new. I'm hesitant to replace the drive without first going to Focus for a possible warranty fix. I'll contact them to see what they say - did you try the warranty route before opening your unit up?

Hey Dave, have you tried replacing the IEEE1384 cable? If the connection breaks intermittently it could cause these symptoms. Definitely give focus a call to see what they say :)

Hi Dave,

My unit was no longer under warranty, so warranty issues were not a concern for me. However, because your issues have been happening since the units were brand new... not something that developed over time, I am less inclined to believe it is a issue with the hard drive itself. I tend to agree it sounds more like it be a firewire problem. Having a loose firewire connection, or bad connection in the firewire port could definately cause the issues you described.... if your using the same firewire on both unites, that would also explain why it has been occuring on both units since they were new.

You might also want to try resetting the unit, or upgrading/reinstalling the firmware.

Dave -- on an unrelated note -- please contact me by email so that we can update your username. Things have changed since you last posted (way back in Oct. 2001, we had only been online for 45 days at that point) and we're now a real-names-only community. Thanks in advance,

CH