DON'T PANIC (got "card read error"? .... relax)

[Geir]

This applies to the BOSS MicroBR, and maybe the other BR's with the same filesystem as well.

I know many of us get "card read errors" from time to time. I've got so many I've lost the count. This is a summery of my experience with those errors.

First of all :

DON'T PANIC !!!

Then :

Most likely the card is not the problem. For some reason or another, these errors occur under certain conditions (see below).

What to do:

Most likely only one or two tracks within the current song are corrupt. Deleting this/these will fix the problem. Sometimes it's enough to "UNDO" and record something new over the same track. If that doesn't work, do as follows. Connect the BR to the computer. Run the BR wave converter program BRWC.exe and select the song you suspect to have the error (the one you where recording to when the error first occurred).  Select all the tracks from that song (the "ALL" button). And "export" them to the computer. This will fail !!! Write down the track that failed, unselect that one and tray again. Repeat until all the tracks you've selected will export. The tracks that wouldn't export are the faulty ones. Disconnect the BR from the computer, delete the faulty tracks from the song and most likely you can continue without problems. (If the problem continues, do the same thing on the other songs as well). But .... make sure you have some free space on the card! See below.

Reasons for card read errors.

This is just my experience, I'm not sure this is correct, but I think I'm close.

* Running out of space on the card. This happens a lot earlier than one could expect. Try to have at least 3-400M free on a 1G card.

* Running out of power.

* Bad luck when bouncing 4 tracks using effects on one or two tracks and drums and reverb. Yeah I know this is the unpredictable one, I think it's more likely to happen in combination with one of the two above.


Most important thing is. DON'T PANIC !!! And take corrective actions as soon as you discover the problem. DON'T WAIT until you've recorded "just one more track"

[Oldrottenhead]

i have experienced all of the above and geir gives good advice. when mastering from time to time i get the busy error, i find i can usually resolve this by optimising the song.

this rarely happens in a song with no bounces but is more prone to happen the more bounces and v tracks you use i find. also i find if i have more songs on a card (not mp3s) but song folders, the more likely card read errors occur, but that could be lack of space as geir already mentioned.

[Oldrottenhead]

First of all :

DON'T PANIC !!!

im afraid i always panic when this happens, well not panic but sorta lose patience, a virtue i dont have.

[Gnasty]

Yes i used to get that error all the time too until i started optimizing as well.

[Gnasty]

Okay this happened to me all afternoon to this one song i want to mix. I found the faulty track and deleted yet its still not working. I freed up tons of room too.

Can't understand why its still not working but im gonna try one more time and if it doesnt work im gonna copy the wavs and send them to another card. I forgot about this post and was gonna make the same one but the G man was here for everyone as always.

[Gnasty]

..so i ended up uploading  the wavs with the BR Wav converter and putting them back in the Mbr on a different card and new song. I had to do my drum steps over again which i guess wasnt so bad and didnt take too long cuz i wrote it all down.

I then started mixing again and it did it again.  I was frustrated but not panicing. I optimized and tried it again and it worked finally!! I dont know if there was something wrong with that certain one track but i didnt want to have to rerecord it cuz it was just a demo anyway.

I guess the best thing to tell you out of this is to not stop trying cuz it can be worth it overall to mess around with the thing instead of rerecording tracks that can take a long time.

[s.w.goatlips]

Don't Panic !??! I feel like throwing my br800 in the f#@$*&g rubbish bin at the moment.
I started recording a song over two weeks ago on a 2 gig card but got a "card full", on 2 gig !
Started erasing tracks but to no avail. Still wouldn't record.  So I connected up to my pc whilst carefully reading the manual and after some wierd trouble (my pc said the sketch folder was empty) I got the tracks onto my pc in wav, but then couldn't work out how to get them back into the wave converter. After much reading and frustration I gave up.
Started the song again on a 4 gig card last week. Today after two bounces the F@^%&*G thing said card full again. I thought "gosh, how odd, it's a 4 gig", (that's actually not what I said), erased a coupla tracks, and still I get "card full".  I checked the card info on the recorder and it's telling me I have over 1000 gig stereo recording or at least 12 hours remain time on the card. To make things even worse, I think I'm the only user on this site who is unable to consume alcohol.........I'm going outside now to beat the shit out of a tree or something.

[Geir]

First of all : congrats with the new BR800 !!
Second of all : Don't Panic !!     * running and hiding now *

I haven't had any of the card full/card read errors yet on my BR800, but am interested in what could have caused this error.  A couple of questions to get to the bottom of this:

* Did you record the song in sketch mode or standard mode?
* Were you running on batteries, or did you at any time lose power during the recording of the song?
* Did you at any time while transfering track between PC and the BR loose the connection?
* Did you get any other errors while recording any of your tracks?

Hope you resolve the problem. And please do post whatever solution you find to this problem!

Go hug a tree now !

[s.w.goatlips]

I'm using mains power, have had no other errors, have not been connected to the computer at all with this effort, and did not at any time lose power.
Am going to load wav files onto the computer, but at this stage have absolutely no confidence that I can load the mix of two stereo tracks back onto the br800 because of the lack of success that I had last week. I can't find anywhere that explains in simple terms for me how to take tracks from the pc back to the recorder. I realise that my computer skills leave a lot to be desired, but I'm getting very frustrated by this whole process. I've never used the wave converter before and it all looks too bloody alien to me. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Geir]

OK. This is from memory so it might not be 100%:

* Connect your BR800. (important : you must have installed the driver)
* On your BR press: "MENU", "USB", "Wave Converter"
* wait a minute or so
* Start BR wave converter (BRWC) (the version that came with the BR800 as the old won't work)
* If your putting a track from the PC to the BR, select "Import" in BRWC.
* select the track (or pair of tracks if stereo) that you want to put your wav- file on.
* click "GO" in BRWC. The "Open file" dialog starts. Select the wav-file you want to put on your BR and select "open"
* wait til it completes loading the file.
* on the BR800, press "exit" to disconnect from the computer. Confirm with "enter".

That's it I think ...