The Darwin Hard Disk Recorder, like PARIS, is a streaming audio device that puts large demands on the storage mechanism used to record the multitrack audio. Over the last few years, drive technology has improved remarkably both in terms of speed, reliability, and in affordability. In general, to use a drive for Hard Disk recording, it should have the following characteristics:

1. It must have a rotation speed of 5400 RPM or faster.
2. It must have average seek time of 12mS or less.
3. It must be an embedded servo design, with no thermal recalibration.
4. IIt should have a limited number of retries in its error correction algorithm (this applies only to removable storage but is critical for real time performance)
5. It should be 4GB or less, any additional capacity will not be usable.

There are more drives out on the market today that work with hard disk recorders than ever before. If you are in the market for a new drive, we highly recommend you purchase a drive from a reputable supplier who will allow you to either try the drive before you buy it or return the mechanism if it proves to be incompatible with your recorder. If you have a Darwin and are using a drive that is not on this list and are experiencing no difficulties, please let us know so that we can add it to this list.

Tested Drives