Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Thread Like Summary - Sooloos power issues and software versions co-existing

Currently have an MD600 running on v2.494. I have not upgraded to v2.538 as there is a power supply issue and I am concerned I might brick the device.

The power supply issue is that sometimes it will not come out of standby (blue light) unless I do a hard power cycle and wait a few minutes. Seem to remember that the software upgrade takes it through a standby/re-boot phase. Is that only to load up the new software or is it part of the software installation?

There is a second problem with the MD600. It sometimes powers off (no light) without any intervention on a two/three week cycle. The solution is as above, a hard power cycle.

It does this when two 3Tb drives are installed. Currently there is one 3Tb drive installed and it has been running for 37 days. The second 3Tb drive has a white warning light so guess that has failed. This suggests to me that the power supply is droopy - is this a reasonable hypothesis. Is there a cure?


Would it be problematic if I were to add a second MD600 to the same installation but running on v2.538?


TIA

Russ (Ratburt IIRC?) recommended replacing pairs of drives, the first time I had a HD fail in my MD600, so stuck with that as good advice since.

From relatively recent experience the flashing lights were the Meridian box formatting the new disks, which took longer than I expected... Running restore from my back up (to 4TB discs) took nearly 24 hours (possibly longer, I just set it to go and left it alone for a weekend). I’d be tempted to get a second new HD and then let restore sort out the library.

I suspect this makes a bit of nonsense of the MD600 having 2 drives but when one disk fails you at least get warning and can keep the remaining drive as a spare physical copy back up (I kept mine at work at least until I retired….) Russ, who understood computers, RAID drives and lots of stuff I’ve never understood or since forgotten, had lots of cogent arguments for his approach and as HDs are relatively cheep I’ve just done as I was advised.

Currently I run just a single MD600 with paired 4TB drives, I think that might be the limit on HD size? Regular back-ups, which in turn are backed up to a different NAS drive. When I get a HD fail in the MD600, I replace the pair and restore from my back up. Works for me, YMMV.

My feeling on what you’ve said is that this is just taking much longer than you expect it to. It’s a music server storage device not a particularly fast computer!

Best wishes

Richard

Derek

The only other thing I have to suggest within my experience is to replace the CMOS battery, a 2032 from memory.

I set my dad up with an MD600 and a couple of MS200s - which he loves, so I have a bit more experience of MD600’s than my single unit might suggest. I have a spare one in the attic in case of a failure. A few years back the one my dad has started failing to boot up so we replaced his CMOS battery and I did my two units as a follow up “preventative maintenance”. He had a hard drive fail recently, he had smaller drives fitted to his MD600, effectively his CDs and a curated selection of my collection. I thought I’d made a separate back up of his MD600, maybe I did and it’s on one of the old HDs that’s in my spares box! But I couldn’t find it so we bought a new pair of 4TB drives and he now has a clone of my MD600 with the full spectrum of music. Quite what he thinks of the wilder and heavier choices in there he hasn’t said….

I’ve replaced power supplies on a few bits of Meridian kit but never had to do my MD600 which has probably been powered up, pretty continuously, since I got it about 12 years ago having very rapidly outgrown the MC200 I had before that. Do you remember if it’s the same as in the G series units, a quick look at the Picture on Duncan’s website looks similar but perhaps not the same one.

Good luck, I think if you have a decent collection of your own music this is a fabulous system. If I didn’t have 1000’s of CDs I might be more interested in streaming as a starting point but at the moment I’d be paying to listen to music I already own, yes I know all the good things about HD formats and the metadata etc that Roon throws at you to follow links to other artists etc…

Richard

Gianni,

I used a T10 and it fits the small screws.