maybe it would be faster to play your songs off USB 2 external hdd if problems persist. Maybe faultry drive, try testing it with the WD utility from their home page. Otherwise might need to get 7200 or faster drive for external and connect through esata, firewire 800/400 or USB 3/2.. while all these except esata are slower connections than internal, if your hdd is to blame, a faster external should fix this. I was having similar issue with my external drive lagging a bit, so I replaced with WD black FAEX 1TB with 64mb cache, helped heaps.. could be your NEW drive has lower cache than old one.. maybe new one is 16mb while old one could have been 32...

Thanks for the response I appreciate the help. I really want to stay away from external drives to store my mp3s. Thats the reason why I got a bigger internal so I wouldn't have to hook up an external everytime i dj or go into serato. I'm honestly not even seeing the cache of my new drive, but I would assume its the same as the old one if not better considering the old one is from 2007 and its 3 years later.

Hey b,

What version of SSL are you currently using?
I would suggest updating to 2.1.1 if you haven't already.
Also go into the 'energy saver' settings of your 'system properties', click on 'show details, uncheck 'put hard disc to sleep when possible' as well as move both sliders to 'never'.

Now click on the 'Settings for' option at the top, choose 'Battery', and do the same in that section.

Also go into the 'Desktop and Screen Saver' settings and make sure your screen saver is set to never come on.

Thanks Zach for your quick response. I have done all things you recommended and so far trying it out at home things seem a lot smoother. I have 4 dj gigs this weekend and will be testing it out for 18 hours. I will get back to you after the weekend to let you know if overall it fixed the problem. Appreciate the help.

every one I know including me had changed there "user replaceable" internal drive with a WD 500gb or higher has had this issue, the hd is spinning down on you a lot and you do not realize it so when you go to load a track, you get the beach ball and a couple of seconds of spinning up before the track will load right?

te only fix so far that we all did (and everyone else bitching on apples forums about it) is the HDAPM fix located here mckinlay.net.nz

What is happening is both Apple and WD want to control shock sensing and sleep abilities on the drive and the FW on the mac is conflicting with the new drive and causes the drive not to operate correctly. this thread on apples forum discusses it a lot too, the guy thought it was too much power draw but it wasn't, discussions.apple.com

is this one of the unibody macs where the drives are easy to replace or one you have to totally tear a part to replace the drive?

I have done this hdapm install for a lot of people so if you need help let me know, I know the situation you are in, had it happen to me at a party too, freaked out, found the fix right after and all has been perfect since

Thanks a ton for your input BriChi. That is exactly my problem that you are describing. Did a dj gig tonight and nothing but beachballs and freezes all night. My Mac is a unibody that is pretty easy to take apart, its from 2007 Macbook Pro. I will try out the links you put and see what I can do, but may need to take you up on that help if/when you can. This is really starting to bug me with all the screen freezes and beachballs. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

So does this happened with all internal drive upgrades above 500gb?

dj-b, no problem man, let me know when/if you need help, I can even screen control your mac through iChat and do what needs to be done, it's a little tricky if you are not to tech savy, You need to show hidden files via a terminal command, then create files in system areas then check if everything is working properly via a console window. I can write up a step by step for ya maybe later today

peeti-v, I believe it's any of the new WD drives, I ut in a 500gb WD and had the issue so it's at least 500gb and higher with the issue

video 1: db.tt

description of what's going on in video because I was at work and could not record my voice

1. open up terminal, type defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
<HIT ENTER>
type killall Finder <HIT ENTER>
hidden files are shown

2.create a folder on desktop called local then in there create one called bin and copy the hdapm (not the plist one) into the bin folder, then take the original local folder you created on the desktop and move it into /usr folder and authenticate

3. copy the hdapm.plist file into 2 spots /library/launchagents and /library/launchdaemons
"Ignore the accidental "compress" i did at 1:34 of the video"

now reboot

video 2: db.tt
open up console (in utilities), you should now see what I highlightd in the video BUT instead of it saying fail you should see success. (it failed for me because I made this video on my imac that this wont work on, but you get the point)

when done, hide hidden files again
open up terminal, type defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
<HIT ENTER>
type killall Finder <HIT ENTER>
hidden files are hidden

you're probably better off downloading the videos I made, they are large files, right click on the links and "save target"

Very helpful BriChi. Thanks:)

My usr folder already has a local folder. Here is a screenshot of what is in it. So kind of stuck at this point as what to do next.

I uploaded just in case you couldn't see the pic.

yfrog.com

Is this issue only with Western Digital Drives ? I have a pre-unibody MBP with seagate drives and am about to walk out the door for a new drive to put into my new unibody MBP.
I have yet to experience this with the laptop using the seagate drives but am curious as to wether it's something I'm missing or something that only affects western digital.


Thanks, Alex.

ok good, so just make the "bin" folder and drop that in local


djphenominal, Not sure what other drives have this issue, have only be researching the WD issue, sorry

btw, this dl.dropbox.com is what the "success" message should look like in "console" when all is said and done and you reboot

alright, I've been seeing this around the forums for a minute and didn't think this effected me until I saw your mov. I have the same drive but on a early 2008 machine MBP. I wasn't getting spinning wheels but every once and a while it would freeze for a quick half a second. Downloaded smart utils and holy shit!!. in one hour I had 40 load cycle counts (total is 69,784!). Ran the fix in a hurry... now in 12 hours only had 1 load cycle and that's because I rebooted. gotta hit new egg Monday and get a new drive.

Brichi thanks again for the help. I can't get the confimation through console that you show. I followed all the steps just can't be sure that it worked. So for now im running hdapm manually through terminal every time i startup. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

dj-b

did you drop hdapm.plist file into 2 spots
/library/launchagents
/library/launchdaemons

yeah, Make sure you drop it in LaunchAgents (dont think you need it in daemons, I dont even have that folder) also make sure it's the library folder in the root of your drive, not the one off your username

Yes I have it in that folder. This may sound strange, but when I look at all messages in Console I have no messages even dated past June of 2009.

yikes.

Mine only goes as far as 09/30/2010

thats very strange, it's supposed to show everything that is always going on up to the minute. Make sure when you open console you select "show log list" then select console messages (or all messages), scroll all the way down, it show have every thing up to the minute like mine here

dl.dropbox.com

what does the message dat and times say here at the bottome where the red arrow is? dl.dropbox.com

yeah it says 4000 messages from 6/17/09 to 12/31/00. any idea how I change it to later?

damn, I thought it always recorded the latest, Are the date and time right on the mac?

What if you open console, then go to file/open recent/all messages

what if you do a string search in console for the word "success", does it bring up and hdapm string like these? dl.dropbox.com

maybe the mac is reading the latest console logs but the date/time is just screwed up

or even search hdapm in case it failed, it wouldnt say success then

Thanks for the troubleshooting ideas, but yeah its only searching that set time frame. So I got nothing when I search "success" or "hdapm". The date and time on my computer are correct too. hmmmm..Not sure what to try next.

that's definitely weird, Ill do some research and see if I can find anything

what version of the OS do you have?
{i'm on 10.6.4)

what version of console?
(i'm on Version 10.6.3 (224))

also,,

what if you hit "clear display" then "reload", does it pick up newer info?

and, in the bottom right of console are "earlier" and "later" buttons, hit them and see if either of them bring you up to today

My OS is 10.5.8

Console is 10.5.6

When I hit clear display and reload it goes right back to where I was with only showing information up to June of 2009. I used the earlier/later buttons, but once again it only falls in that range from '00-'09.

oh, maybe it's something with the older version of the OS/Console then, thats a pretty big difference in software versions. Any change of you upgrading this week to Snow Leopard? it's only like $30

Looking into upgrading to snow leopard now. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

ok cool, good luck!

Hi 2 all,

dose this helps also with external hdd because I have the same problem with my serato on new mac pro (2010) leopard snow 10.6.4.

before i used windows and HP laptop but its was time to upgrade and now with new mac pro (i use this laptop only for serato and brought it only for that) i have more problems on gigs and on last 6 gigs i had 4 times program freeze (last was about 3 minutes long) but audio is working and I can control loaded tracks with vinyl but no control on program so I must wait to get respond from system and play tracks that are already loaded or kill serato and start it again :(

external HDD was NTFS format but now i deleted all my music from it and format it to mac journaled but i'm not sure if this will help because im 99% sure that this have no relation to HDD format...

grtz from zagreb,
mali

and I forgot to mention that my external HDD is Hitachi 160Gb IDE drive :)

grtz

It could be that the drive going to sleep. Have you set your energy saver option to never let drive spin down (verbiage might be different)

Energy saver option are all to never.. the only problem is that it dose not happen all the time and not in some time interval.. 1 time it was after 3h of playing.. second time after about 2h and last time it happed after 30min of playing.. but one time I played about 5h and all was fine so its hard to check if all is fine now...

will try it and if all will be OK for at last 3 gigs in a row then all is fine ;)

grtz