Thumb Drive Lock Up

Had another nice, informative call from Gary this morning. Despite his health issues, he is still out here solving problems. While we were in the process of solving all the world’s problems, I just happened to mention I had an issue with a thumb drive in an S970 that mysteriously locked into “Read Only” mode. It would not allow additions, deletions or edits to registrations. Nada. Never happened before in all my Yammies going back to the PSR 2000.

Apparently it is a rare occurrence and not mentioned in any of the manuals. It happened to Gary a couple of times over the years. He concluded it was because he removed the drive while the KB was on. If KB is turned off prior to removing the drive it, apparently, is similar to the ejection process required with Macs and PCs.

It’s the first I have heard of this….but it sounds plausible to me. I found a way to get the drive out of Read Only mode, but Gary doesn’t recommend it. Cheaper and safer to buy another thumb drive. He said he was going to try to post the info here…and he probably will in time….but, his plate if pretty full at the moment
Eddie

I hot swap the usb drive in my Korgs all the time, and never once had an issue. Sometimes, I do it 4-5 times a night.

Me too Dave, but I've also done it in Yamahas for years with no problems.

Same here. But I can't think of any other reason that would activate the Write Only error.

Lots of reasons, including full moon, Halloween, gremlins, Bill Gates, Obama, Trump...

I've purchased MIDI song files from Yamaha MusicSoft that had some type of copy protection on them. At the very least, they couldn't be edited in the instrument (which was frustrating, because all I really wanted to do was change the key.) I think I encountered issues writing to, and reading from the folder they were stored in, but I don't remember.

This can be just a thumb drive fault, I think I've had one fail like this.

I also plug and unplug drives from both my old PSR3000 and current Tyros 3 with them powered up. I always wait a few seconds after saving something to the drive before unplugging just to be sure there's no data transfer going on.

Also I've got quite a few Yamaha midi files for my Tyro 3 and always been able to edit and change the key, if the file uses mega voices i find this is easier than using my pc because the keyboard understands which key ranges should not be transposed. You get a copyright warming when you save the file.

I think the inbuilt sample songs may be more heavily protected?

I contacted Yamaha's Factory Service about this and talked with a service tech 3 or 4 years ago that said "Keep in mind that an arranger keyboard is nothing more than a computer equipped with piano keys - nothing more, nothing less. People constantly get away with hot swapping USB drives in their PC and never encounter a problem. When they do, they usually get the same message. It can be from a corrupt midi or style file, kinda like a virus in a PC. The problems are very similar and the prevention is the same. Power down before removing the USB and the problem is soled."

Since then, I have always powered down and have never encountered the problem again.

On two occasions I was able to fix the problem on the PC (Not sure if you can do this with a MAC.) One drive, however, completely failed during the fix process. Fortunately, I kept three backup drives on hand at all times - just to be on the safe side. (No such thing as too many backups.)

So, that's the failing USB drive solution from the folks at Yamaha. I figured I was not the only person that called them about this problem, the tech said the calls were rare, but the solution is easy. Why not play it safe? Made sense to me.

Good luck on whatever you decide to do,

Gary

I lost a thumb drive on my Pa4X, probably by hot swapping. I power down now.