Disks go offline only when running 2 dMC instances simultaneously

[Alives]

I have begun to notice a problem where my disk is going offline while i perform a flac to mp3 conversion. I havent noticed this problem previously. It has only happened about 4 times to me so far.

It began happening when I upgraded my CPU from an Athlon 64 3000+ (in windows xp 32bit) to an Athlon 4400+ X2 (still 32bit OS but dualcore cpu). Since I have two cores and dMC isnt dual core capable yet, I run 2 instances of it to utilize 100% of my cpu, both running at idle priority, with an affinity for both CPUs. I have noticed that the disk will click once and I hear it spin down. About 30-45 seconds later it will click again and spin up. dMC will error saying something about the disk no longer being accessible and Windows will then pop up a delayed write failure.

I have overcome this delayed write error by immediately pausing dMC when I hear the click and waiting for the 2nd click to unpause. dMC will resume normally at this point.

It should also be noted that nothing else is putting a load on this disk while this is happening. The disk only contains these flac files and 2 dMC's are the only program accessing it.

My concern is that this is:
1) making me feel very unsafe
2) not good to start/stop the disk numerous times
3) dangerous in that I could easily lose data while this happens

What could be causing the disk to stop like this?

I will continue testing with just 1 instance of dMC running to rule that out as well.

dBpowerAMP Music Converter: Release 11.5
FLAC: Release 5.3 (using FLAC 1.1.2)
Mp3 (Lame): Lame Version 3.96.1

[LtData]

Re: Disks go offline only when running 2 dMC instances simultaneously

Why not use the beta multi-processor multi-encoder codec to encode your files to 2 formats at the same time? Running two instances of dMC doesn't sound like a good idea. Also, if you encode to WMA, that codec is already dual-core aware as the dMC WMA codec calls up functions that Microsoft has written and has made dual-core aware.

[Alives]

Re: Disks go offline only when running 2 dMC instances simultaneously

Im concerned about running beta software. I dont have time to check these conversions and I need to trust that it is working. Is it trustworthy? Why is it still in beta?

I just tried it and it is not much help as I am converting flac to mp3. I am not doing multiple codec conversions. Ideally dMC could run 1 conversion per CPU it detects and utilize the full capacity of the computer it is running on.

[Deano]

Re: Disks go offline only when running 2 dMC instances simultaneously

What I think LtData is trying to tell you is that dMC is not dual core aware, so Windows has to manage the priority of the processor/processors. dMC is not designed to be run in multiple instances, this is the point he's trying to make.

Also, are you writing to an external hard drive? It sounds like it, what make does it happen to be?

[LtData]

Re: Disks go offline only when running 2 dMC instances simultaneously

It is beta because there are still some bugs that will kill the conversion. However, the files that are produced are normally fine. In my experience, sometimes it produces files which aren't the full track. However, a quick load into any player such as Winamp or dAP will scan the tags and tell you if the files work or not. However, since you are not converting one file to multiple formats, this will not help you.

dMC r12 will be dual-core aware, as will the codecs. However, a final version of this program is still many months off.

It sounds like your HDD is spinning down because both programs are trying to read and write to different areas of the hard drive at the same time. Also, why not give one instance of dMC CPU0 and one CPU1? Since dMC is not dual-core aware, they could both fully use their one CPU core.

[Alives]

Re: Disks go offline only when running 2 dMC instances simultaneously

Its an internal SATA WD4000YR (400GB 16MB cache)

[Alives]

Re: Disks go offline only when running 2 dMC instances simultaneously

I had them on split affinities prior and the same thing happened. I have been running one instance of dMC for the past 18 hrs and everything is fine.

Drives can handle multiple accesses from multiple programs, which is what is concerning me that something possibly very big is happening here. I will only run one instance from now on.

Will there be a beta release that is dualcore aware? I'd like to help test it.

[LtData]

Re: Disks go offline only when running 2 dMC instances simultaneously

Right now it is only an early alpha and only supports wav and mp3 files. Also, there isn't support for Audio CD Input just yet either. If you still wish to download it, there is a link to the particular thread in my signature below. Also, any betas are located in the Beta section of this forum.