Cakewalk is not responding

[Astral]

Hi

Not sure when and how it started- was it right after the latest update or little after- we used to be able to use software and now we cant do anything. When opening the program, it spinning and spinning just to open project selection window (recent projects). Then if it does opens it- I click on the project that used to work and now it spinning and spinning and then it says- program is not responding. If I wait long enough with this project, it hangs on "Loading audio regions". and after like 10 minutes, it says, "Some external audio files could not be found and were replaced with silence".   Or- it opens the project but when I click Play, it spinning and spinning and can't play. Any thoughts? What do I do? This is Ivy Bridge 3770K processor, 2013 computer with many soft synths and effects on it. Thank you.

When the project finally opens, I hit Play, it waits at least a minute, starts playing and then has audio dropout. I currently use M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R. The buffer is set to 256. I wanted to increase buffer size, but it grayed out. The clock of audio interface set to Internal. I cant change it- it also grayed out.  It says, "Because driver is streaming, many settings may not be adjusted. Because Sync source is internal, the sample rate may be adjusted and external digital signal will be ignored". What in the world it means? I can adjust sample rate in Cakewalk, but buffer size is not adjustable. 

Edited September 23, 2019 by Astral

[Promidi]

From some of what you describe, it looks like a hard drive may be on its way out.

Can you check the Windows system Event viewer for any disk errors.  Or you could use CrystalDisk info to check the smart info....

[Astral]

Thank you for the reply. I would not think the hard drive would be going out, but I have to look at it. First of all 2013 custom built computer is not that old. It had top of the line for the time 3770K processor and good motherboard. There is maybe 15% increase in functionality in hardware from that time. This is dedicated music only computer and was used very lightly- couple of times a week. With that said- when I built newer computer, Kaby Lake, I am not sure if I replaced that drive or put new drive in to new computer. I have like 6 or more drives in that computer. E drive is dedicated recording drive- Seagate, 72rpm. Yes, Seagates do go bad- I had it happened. The project that has issue was made on my newer computer and then file was copied- I dont remember if I transported it as package file or if I just copied all folders from one E drive to another. These 2 computers have similar configuration. But aside all of that- the file used to work a month ago. I was able to play 7 minutes song- it was near completion. So I do not understand why it talks about external audio and why it has audio dropout. Yes, it has like 50 tracks, but it normally able to handle it. I was able to open newer small project last night and it was playing, but I have to look at it more. Thank you. 

[Astral]

Yep- the newer project also has audio dropout and hangs for almost a minute before play starts and then stops with audio dropout. What do I do? Uninstall and reinstall Cake? Thank you. 

[Promidi]

15 minutes ago, Astral said:

Yep- the newer project also has audio dropout and hangs for almost a minute before play starts and then stops with audio dropout. What do I do? Uninstall and reinstall Cake? Thank you. 

Just confirming that you've checked the Windows system Event viewer and used CrystalDisk to check the smart info
 
I am still thinking hard drive.  Rule that out first.

Maybe uninstall and reinstall your audio interface drivers - maybe a Windows Update borked it.

[Astral]

I am trying to run Disk Check by Windows. I just started but so far I see no progress. I did not want to install CrystalDisk as I could not figure what download link is healthy. Right now Cakewalk does not open- main window opens and then it just spinning, saying it is Not Responding. Now it says, "Windows was not able to scan this drive. Try the scan again. If problem persists, Scan and repair drive. Ok- this is E drive where I store projects. Not C drive. E drive is only for recording. Gotta try again. 

[Astral]

Another issue is that I am trying to play .wav files by double clicking on them. The Groove music app opens and says, "Nothing to show here- try another file". Was able to play short file from C drive, but long files from E drive start and stop and start and stop- sound like buffering. Maybe because I have 2 testing utilities running now. 

Also trying to test E- drive with Seagate Tools and it runs scan on one of disks but not able to run on another (not identified by letter). 

Edited October 13, 2019 by Astral

[Promidi]

This is definitely sounding like a borked E Drive.

Here is a safe link for CrystalDiskInfo

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/crystaldiskinfo.html

Edited October 13, 2019 by Promidi

[Astral]

Installed Disk Info. I dont know where it installed- not seeing icon, so to open it using exe file, which is probably not ideal. Takes it a minute to open. So all disks healthy, E disk shows Yellow, Caution. Realocated sector count- 99, Current Pending Sector Count- 46, Uncorrected Sector Count 46- those are yellow, everything else is blue. What can I do with this information? Can it be fixed? Thank you. 

[Promidi]

It's a portable application so clicking on the EXE is ok (DiskInfo.exe or DiskInfo64.exe)

I would not deem Yellow: Caution as healthy. 

You may be able to back up your data from the E: drive, reformat and map out the bad blocks and then restore the data.  However, there is no guarantee that you'll not get any further bad blocks.

If this was my disk, I would be looking at a replacement now.  Once the new disk arrives,   back up your data from the E: drive if you haven't already, replace the drive and then restore the data. 

Remember, it may still be under warranty.  If it is under warranty, then you can use the results from Seatools as evidence.  If it's not under warrantry then consider a WD Black if spindle or even a Samsung Evo 860 SSD.

What ever you do, that E: drive is cactus and is on its way out.  Now would be a good time to back that data up.

[Astral]

Thank you for your reply. I started to copy one of the audio files from E to D. It had about 4Gb of audio files and it been over hour, it slowly copying about 30%. When attempt to play these audio files, it sounds intermittent- like it plays-stops-plays-stops. Want to see if it copies normally.  I already received new drive that will be E. I do not have back up for couple of songs we were working on, but that's ok- nothing special. Will see if these files play normally. The E drive is over 5 years, so no warranty. But it was barely used, not sure why it would go bad. Back in the day I build $4000 Dell because it had SCSI drives- 15,000 RPM. Seagate Cheetahs. Each drive was like 900$, I had 3. 1st died on arrival, had to reinstall Windows- Dell sent me new drive, then 2nd one die- so 2 out of 3 died in 5 years. I bought brand new 8TB external drive from Seagate and that thing had the same problem as my current E- tests would not run, back up would freeze... Seagate is not as reliable as everybody thinks. Be aware.  

[Robert Bone]

Years back, I went hog-wild on the new solid-state drives when they first came out, and bought 2 $800 drives way back in like 2007 or so - they were the biggest ones out at the time.  They both ended up going belly-up in short order, and since that time, I put a LOT more research into new technology prior to pouring money into the latest and greatest thing.

I hope you are able to back up your data from that drive that seems close to pushing up the daisies.

For whatever the worth, I stick to internal drives being no bigger than 2 TB, and mostly store static sample libraries on solid-state drives, with the most used libraries kept on a 2 TB M.2 NVME PCIe drive, and a 2nd M.2 NVME drive used as my boot drive.

User folders and things like Cakewalk Content, I keep spread across a couple of 2 TB SATA III HDD's, spinning at 7,200.

All of my drives have 5 year warranties, and I have 2 external copies of all of my user data - including Cakewalk projects.  The sample libraries can all be downloaded again from the web, so I do not worry about backing those up - the EastWest libraries came on their own external drive anyways, so that's kewl.  I DO keep various freeware sample libraries for Kontakt, or 'boutique libraries' backed up.

Bob Bone

[Astral]

I copied the folder that contained masters of last album in 16 and 24 bit from E to D drive- it was about 4GB folder and it took like 10 hours to copy. On E drive, these files were playing like scratched CD- they were skipping. On D drive now they play normally. Trying to understand. If it CAN play audio files normally on another drive, this means the files are not corrupted, so why it can't play them when they on E drive? I get it- HDD is a disk, almost like CD, so it can have issues. But if CD is scratched- there is no getting your music to play- it is physical damage. These songs skip when on E drive but normal when on D, and computer was able to read it to Copy but very slow. What does it means? Can it be SATA cable? It uses 3Gb/Sec SATA cable, I could try to change it?

Now I am copying Sonar projects folder- I started night before- it been all night and all day and at 1am next day, it is at 11%. I dont know if it froze. I dont see it moving since I been typing this post... I do have older back up that will be missing few latest projects. 

Seagate never replaced my external 8TB drive- they had excuses, I was too slow to reply to messages, because testing it was taking forever... And yes, in 2008, Dell sold me lap top with 120Gb SSD for $600 just for SSD. 

[Promidi]

41 minutes ago, Astral said:

 These songs skip when on E drive but normal when on D, and computer was able to read it to Copy but very slow. What does it means? Can it be SATA cable? It uses 3Gb/Sec SATA cable, I could try to change it?

 

I believe what is going on here comes down to what happens when the system encounters a bad part of the disk during data retrieval.

When a disk is (sort of) faulty, the read might fail on the first attempt, so it retries multiple times until it succeeds.  If gives it a damn good number of attempts.  Of course, sometimes it just gives up, says stuff it, and throws up a disk error message. 

This is why your copy is very slow and why your audio from this drive glitches.  You can imagine what happens when your system is streaming a file from a faulty disk - it will glitch when it gets to that part of the disk that is faulty as it tries to do the stream.

I am pretty sure that even the fail retry and eventually succeed cycle will result in an event being recorded in the System Event Logs as a bad block.  This is why it's always good to look in there if you suspect a disk issue.

So no, you probably do not need a new cable. (unless replacing the disk gives you the same issue)

[Astral]

Yes, but if sectors are bed, how come it plays normally from another disk after it was copied from bed disk?

A day later, it sits at 26% for my Sonar projects folder. I dont need it, I dont trust it. It gave error message on one of files, this is why it waisted a lot of time trying.  

[Promidi]

The bad sectors are bad enough to fail to read on the first attempt, but may eventually succeed after multiple attempts.  Once the system has that data (that it eventually was able to read) and copies it to a fully functional good disk, it will subsequently be able to read that data on the first attempt.

[Robert Bone]

It may be possible the circuitry on the HDD is on its way out, too, though I concur in the thinking that the drive hardware itself might be starting to fail on bad sectors.

If you have a backup of the data on the drive(s) having issues, why not populate the replacement drive from the backup data, and that would likely get you most of the way there - with only data changed since that backup needing to be copied over to the new drive.  Maybe that would cut down on the time it has been taking, as you could target only the outdated or missing data from the old drive, compared against the new drive's data that was populated initially from the recent backup....

I hope the above makes sense.  (only copy data not present or updated since the backup, so lots less to have to copy from the old to the new)

Bob Bone

[Astral]

Thank you for your replies. I started copying from failing drive, now after 3 days I am at 36%, I dont want to stop it. It stumbled few times on Sonar .ASSET files and some files from Obsynth- probably audio. Anybody knows what are the ASSET files? Thanks. 

[scook]

The .asset files were used with Gobbler. They are no longer needed. Gobbler changed it line of business and the feature that relied on the .asset files is no more. It is safe to delete or skip copying asset files.

[Astral]

Thank you for this good information. Last night I accidentally terminated the process. Because my partner opened "More Info" view and I never seen it before, so the green bar turned in to graph. I wanted to close it, so I hit the X and- bam- terminated. It copied something like 150GB. Waited 3 days. I am ignorant, so I did not know if there was a way to resume from where it stopped, so I just deleted all files that were copied... The hard part of restoring it from back up is that I am not sure what backup I have. It may be image file, may be incremental back up... I have the same drive on another computer, but I dont have any free SATA to connect new drive, and would have to open case, disconnect some drive, connect this drive, format it, then copy files, then reconnect everything. Or- I can copy over network, but I will have to drag that computer from another house... Or- see how much space I have on my portable... Seagate makes me really angry right now.