How do I choose a new drive for my Kron?

[johnneumann]

I bought an 80 gig drive for my Kron a few years ago and have had nothing but problems with it. The Kron crashes at least once a month and all my data is lost. Tech support at MS supposes that I have a defective sector on the drive.

I looked at the MS website for a new hard drive for my Kron. They give no info whatsoever other than the storage capacity. 160 and 320 gigs. I also asked what brand they sell, and they said the brands rotate all the time and you never know what you're getting until the day you're ready to buy. That sounds a little scary to me.

I understand these are IDE drives, although I don't know what that means. I suppose that's an interface standard.

If I wanted to shop around for the most reliable hard drive possible for my Kron, what specs do I need to look for to make sure this thing fits into the Kron properly? Is "any IDE hard drive" enough information to guarantee that it'll fit into my Kron? Or are there more specs involved to make sure it fits into this machine?

Also, are there any formatting issues? Or does the Kron format the drive upon installing it?

-JOHN

ps. I googled around on IDE hard drives since posting this some half-hour ago. Seems like there's also RPMs to consider, different "series" of drives, and a wild spread on prices, from $39 to $120 for the same 160gb drive. Any advice?

After my bad experience with my existing drive, I'd like to get this right this time around.

[BobFoster]

Technology marches on and obsoletes all the good stuff. Sometimes they can be found on ebay, but not lately. Carroll Lam may have some in stock. Try here.
http://www.clamcamvideo.com/drives.html

[TimKennelly]

For the Kron you need a PATA (not SATA) IDE 100 or 133 Drive with an RPM speed of 7200.

This is old tech and so not readily available in a lot of places.

Hard Drive prices have recently sky rocketed due to flooding over in South East Asia (and the Japan fiasco) even for current SATA drives.

Western hard drives were not recommended for the older editing machines like the Kron, ironically that is the only manufacturer that is still making acceptable PATA drives I believe.

I'd take Bob's advice and check with Carroll or other dealers that might have stockpiled hard drives when they saw the issue coming.

Good Luck.

[johnneumann]

Thank you for the replies, Guys.

Geez, such concise information too. I can already see I would have made a mistake buying the wrong drive if I hadn't waited on your responses. All the drives I saw online looked good by my ignorant standards.

I'll check this other seller you recommended ... but maybe MS won't be so far off price-wise at $169 for 320 gigs.

Geez, 320 gigs in my old Kron. I can't even imagine.

-JOHN

[TimKennelly]

John,

You'd also want to check with MS and/or a dealer on the largest drive size compatible with a Kron which is really old tech.

I believe the Kron required an optional software to go beyond either 80GB or 160GB, can't remember for sure.

[MichaelD]

. . . 256Mb ram to run bigger drives . . . and probably Smart Edit too . . .

[Martyn]

In the UK Western Digital are the only PATA drives available now. I checked with MSDE and they said they have no issues with this brand now. In fact WD SATA drives are used in the S machines. We have supplied quite a few now and have had only one failure so far. The WD drives are much lighter in weight than other brands were and the jumper setting are different. For a configuration using a Master with Slave (Avio and Kron) check the position of the jumper. For Master only (Kron plus/Prestige) jumper is removed completely.

Martyn
Dalco uk

[johnneumann]

Thank you for the replies, guys. Jeez, the time you save me researching...

Would you recommend spending the bucks and getting one from MS?

Or are there plenty to be had around for much much less?

Again, I could do the homework, but there are so many specs attending each drive when I google it, it gets confusing mighty fast for someone who has no technical interest in this stuff.

-JOHN