External USB or Network Drive

[Mark Norville]

Ouch ooops but send it back and you should get a replacement and hopefully that will work better.

As for a sound leisure cab vs a custom built PC.

Sound
-------
pro Good cabinet, wall mountable
con unless you strip out from what I have seen you need to stick to windows xp

Custom built
---------------
Pro more options about storage, can be cheap if just a low budget pc for jukebox only.
con unless you put in a cab then will never feel like a jukebox, only a pc with touchscreen

A custom built cabinet though with a bit of wood is easy enough though if you know someone with woodworking skills, at least you can wall mount the monitor and even build the computer into it.

[Barcrest]

The sound leisure route is the easiest and if you find one not working but with the touchscreen ok then actually cheaper than building your own. You can buy and old SFF PC that will run windows 7 to drop in there for next to nothing now on ebay. Also try looking at other touchscreen kiosks there are others that make a good jukebox.

[yakman4]

This is what i have set up too. Yakman you might want to try the V9 demo (Install to a different folder) as that is faster, try it and see what you think.

Just upgraded to Version 9 runs a lot faster and smoother Thanks for the tip.

[berrywell]

Question to any of you who use an external hard drive to store their audio or video files.

I'm nearly back on my feet with my jukebox project, I've decided to go with a 120GB SSD for operating system boot and an second internal drive for the storage of audio files & this all works fine.

My problem is that I've used an external HDD for storage of my music videos, I've now discovered that the external HDD automatically goes to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity.
Does anyone have any ideas/solutions to prevent this from happening? It is quite annoying waiting for the HDD to spin up and start working, causing quite a delay before the videos start playing. This hibernation mode is a feature of the WD HDD itself and not Windows 7.

[Barcrest]

Question to any of you who use an external hard drive to store their audio or video files.

I'm nearly back on my feet with my jukebox project, I've decided to go with a 120GB SSD for operating system boot and an second internal drive for the storage of audio files & this all works fine.

My problem is that I've used an external HDD for storage of my music videos, I've now discovered that the external HDD automatically goes to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity.
Does anyone have any ideas/solutions to prevent this from happening? It is quite annoying waiting for the HDD to spin up and start working, causing quite a delay before the videos start playing. This hibernation mode is a feature of the WD HDD itself and not Windows 7.

Mine never hits that situation as I will have random music playing when there are no user songs. You could set it up to play a random song every X minutes to keep the drive active. Alternatively take the drive out of the enclosure and fit it internally.

[Mark Norville]

It does help us if you state the make and model number, WD have loads of different models.

It is like going into a car forum and saying, I have this car and every 10 mins there is a rattle.

Try this https://community.wd.com/t/drive-keeps-going-to-sleep/171

Regards

Mark
(On a forum somewhere, on a computer. in the World wide web, in the galaxy, the universe - all very vague answers)

[berrywell]

Mine never hits that situation as I will have random music playing when there are no user songs. You could set it up to play a random song every X minutes to keep the drive active. Alternatively take the drive out of the enclosure and fit it internally.

Thank you Barcrest, I never thought about doing that, I shall enable that feature and see how it goes.

It does help us if you state the make and model number, WD have loads of different models.

It is like going into a car forum and saying, I have this car and every 10 mins there is a rattle.

Try this https://community.wd.com/t/drive-keeps-going-to-sleep/171

Regards

Mark
(On a forum somewhere, on a computer. in the World wide web, in the galaxy, the universe - all very vague answers)

Perhaps I should have explained things in more details.
I had already investigated the HDD problem before I posted in this forum when I first encountered the 10 minute sleep mode. It would appear that lots of others are having this problem with external hard drives as well (not just Western Digital). It is a feature built into the firmware of the HDD and not a windows feature, which is what I was hoping it would be.
WD have released a workaround for Windows 8.1 & 10 but sadly nothing for Windows 7, (which is what I'm using - I managed to acquire an old PC with it on.)

Hence why I asked on here to see if people who were using an external HDD with their Jukebox what, if anything, they had come up with to prevent this happening.

[Barcrest]

Mine never hits that situation as I will have random music playing when there are no user songs. You could set it up to play a random song every X minutes to keep the drive active. Alternatively take the drive out of the enclosure and fit it internally.

Thank you Barcrest, I never thought about doing that, I shall enable that feature and see how it goes.

You could always do this with the jingles as well if you put the jingles on the external drive and point E-touch to there if you don't want a random song playing every X minutes. I just had random playing all the time and have it set to turn off when a user song is selected but like i said you could have a random song every x minutes as well if you don't want random to be constant.

[Mark Norville]

Either that or if you have just brought it send it back saying that it is unfit for purpose it keeps going to sleep. I dare say better to get rid now rather than later when you are ready to throw it out of the window.

[Barcrest]

Either that or if you have just brought it send it back saying that it is unfit for purpose it keeps going to sleep. I dare say better to get rid now rather than later when you are ready to throw it out of the window.

A Lot of the external drives to this, I think in part it is to help prevent overheating. I bet mine is positively cooking at home right now.