Max is killing my drive (literally)

[Dcislander]

Hey all,

This was a topic that came up months ago, but I found a work around. I just retried ripping a CD with Max from an external Iomega drive and the drive just dies. The drive works with all other programs.

I tried changing computers to see if it was a CPU issue, but it is the same. Specs: Using an Iomega CDDVD482416E23 CD-RW drive. I am also on an Apple MacBookPro X10.4. Mac works perfectly when using the system drive.
This is what happens when I put a CD in the iomega drive:
1. CD spins and shows up with tags in both Itunes and a Max window.
2. I select all tracks and hit encode.
3. The CD spins in the drive and track 1 shows up in the Max window as phase: "Ripping" remaining "Queued"
4. Within 10 seconds the Cd stops spinning and the nothing at all happens.
5. The Iomega drive becomes immobilized and will not eject or respond, even after I quit out of Itunes and Max.
6. The only way to get the CD out is to disconnect the power and start over.

Now the odd thing. When I do not have Max open and simply control the Iomega drive via Itunes, it works perfectly, playing tracks, advancing tracks and importing tracks.

I cannot figure out why Max is killing the CD drive. Any ideas at all? I am about 200 CD's into a 2000 Cd collection and I can feel my internal drive losing it already.

Thanks much for any help.

[sbooth]

That is extremely strange! Max uses ioctls for disc reading which map to standard MMC commands (READ CD et al) so it's hard to imagine what the problem would be. I haven't ever heard of something like this before. What interface does the drive use?

[Dcislander]

The drive is an IOMEGA® CD-RW 52X24X52X / DVD-ROM 16X USB 2.0 EXTERNAL DRIVE
I am connected via USB2.0.

Does that help shed any light on it?

[RonaldPR]

1. CD spins and shows up with tags in both Itunes and a Max window.

I do not know if this has anything to do with your problem, but apparently you have the CD opened in both iTunes and Max at the same time. Do other users also rip CDs with Max while the CD is shown in iTunes also? It never even occurred to me to try this.

[Dcislander]

It gets more bizarre:
When I put a disc into the external drive Itunes auto opens. If I quit Itunes and only have Max open, the same thing happens as before: the drive freezes, but prior to freezing the drive literally sounds like it it dying-it whirs, spins, sounds like it is trying to locate something on the disc which it cannot find. BUT when I ONLY have Itunes open, and play a CD with Itunes, the drive works perfectly and sounds completely normal. Crazy. Any ideas?

[Fuga]

The rare times I use Max to rip I always have iTunes open so as to use the script posted elsewhere that passes iTunes' Gracenote info to Max. No problems.

[Dcislander]

I do not have any problem ripping into Itunes with the external drive, only Max. It does not matter if Itunes is open or not. I just ordered a OWC drive. I will give that one a shot.