Disklavier

i am a big fan of cloning. i clone the drives on all my computers and 
have never had an unrecoverable loss in 15 years.

On 9/10/2014 11:01 AM, orionplt@... [disklavier] wrote:
>
> Success...sort of.  I was able to reconstruct a new drive for the system.
>
>
> Some lessons learned:
>
> The rescue CDs were instrumental in my success -- Thank you Bill
>
> I did not have a boot disk as all our updates had been done over the 
> network.  I was able to get the required files from both Bill and off 
> of the Yamaha update website (now FTP://54.183.42.154 not what the 
> support page says; login information is the same).  They use syslinux 
> as the boot environment so I thought it would be easy to build the 
> floppy. Unfortunately, they used version 2.08 vice the newest version 
> 6.02.  It took me a while to figure out that the new version didn't 
> work for this purpose.  You can easily get the older version off the 
> syslinux.org site.  The other challenge is that you need a bootable 
> floppy (remember the days of format /s a: or sys a:) That is not 
> really easily available in the newer windows versions since floopys 
> are rare now.  I happen to have an old copy of msdos 6.22 which 
> allowed me to make one.  I believe I could have probably used a 
> version of FreeDOS as well.  Once I did this it was a matter of 
> running a command line: syslinix.exe -i -s a:.  This assumes you are 
> in the syslinux directory.  The -i switch installs and -s switch is 
> called "slow and stupid" which makes the install more tolerant of 
> difficult systems. This command modifies the boot loader on the 
> floppy. Then you copy the four files files from the support site.  The 
> ldlinux.sys file will not copy as it is a lock file already on the 
> floppy from the syslinux installation but that was not a problem.  I 
> also changed all the file names to lower case except for the M in the 
> M4arun.key as the literature I saw said that the system would be case 
> sensitive and in reading the configuration file the calls were all 
> lower case.  Once I got this all done I followed the install 
> procedure.  An hour later it had partitioned and built the new drive 
> in the Disklavier.
>
> Even though the overall drive was not really functional, I was able to 
> get the music files off the old drive.  They seem to all be .FID files 
> in the volume labeled as partition 9.  There are folders for pianosoft 
> and user files.  I will try to load those tonight to see how well that 
> works.  In looking over the drive it looks like it had been slowly 
> degrading and taking portions of the disk with it.  This is not really 
> unusual for a spinning drive that is almost 10 years old. Most systems 
> detect, manage, and try to warn the user but with this being an 
> embedded application it does not really have a good way of doing that. 
>  They probably relied on the drives SMART monitor and assumed that 
> when the drive finally  stopped working the owner would get it fixed 
> and reload their music.
>
> Recommendations:
>
> Make a boot disk (actually make two; just in case).  I have two now.
>
> Back up your music files, although I have read that there seems to be 
> issues with this process for some.  In moving six time with the piano 
> we have misplaced some of the original disks and I really didn't 
> realized the functionality of the music download (i.e. copy) until 
> now.  Should have been obvious as I have comprehensive computer backup 
> strategies but just didn't think of the piano like I should have.
>
> Make a clone of the drive (actually make two; just in case).  Once I 
> have my music loaded up again I will take the drive out and clone it. 
>  Even if it doesn't have all our music it will have a working system 
> and most of the music.  I might even work on a rotation method where I 
> remove the drive, update the clone, and do a thorough disk health test 
> on it prior to putting it back in.  I saw how some are looking at a 
> method to install the hard drive in a external location to make this 
> easier.  I might look at this as well although it wasn't that 
> difficult to remove as is (if I am only doing it 1-2 times a year).
>
> Thanks again for all the help getting our Disklavier back up and 
> running.  While it was not ideal to have it break I did learn a lot 
> and found a lot of good resources,  I also have gotten motivated to do 
> more with the system with the new tools I have found.
>
> Regards,
> Joel
> 

-- 

Best regards, Spencer Chase
67550-Bell Springs Rd.
Garberville, CA 95542 Postal service only.
Laytonville, CA 95454 UPS only.
Spencer@...
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(425) 791-0309