What is the acceptable media for backing up user created patches on the Motif ES8?  I “used” to have a Smart Media card to record to, but that’s since been long lost.  I tried using several different USB drives but to no avail.  Each time the Motif tried to format them I got a “-1” error occurred message.

Tried various USB1, USB2, USB3 (not supported I’m sure) drives with varying capacities 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, but all are giving the error.

Can I attach an actual USB hard drive to it?
What are the specs for USB storage?

Thanks,
Steve

sjurick - 21 March 2017 03:02 PM

What is the acceptable media for backing up user created patches on the Motif ES8?  I “used” to have a Smart Media card to record to, but that’s since been long lost.  I tried using several different USB drives but to no avail.  Each time the Motif tried to format them I got a “-1” error occurred message.

Tried various USB1, USB2, USB3 (not supported I’m sure) drives with varying capacities 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, but all are giving the error.

Can I attach an actual USB hard drive to it?
What are the specs for USB storage?

Thanks,
Steve

You should posted your question in Motif ES forum. Regarding USB drives, only those up to 4Gb could be used, although 2Gb is much better solution. Higher capacities could not be readable also due to the fact that they are newer types formatted as extFat or even NTFS. Motif ES could only read Fat or Fat16 format.
On the other side, external USB CD-ROM could also be used. I had one and it could read voice libraries from original CD that came with Motif. I think that I have tried external USB HDD 40Gb, but without success. You should also check compatibility PDF at download.yamaha.com, where some incompatible a USB sticks are listed. One of problem of the lates USB sticks are some utility software preinstalled on USB. It should be deleted before you have tried to format them in Motif.
Regarding Smart Media, I have bought SM to xD adapter for less than $10 and xD cards that were available at that time in capacities of 128Mb (max amount accept d by ES). I have used it only for upgrading firmware, but also for storing samples since SM is faster that USB 1.1 which exists in ES.

Alex

USB thumb drives must be 4GB or less to work with the ES.

USB hard drives can be any size, I used a 60GB unit with my ES for 5 years. You may have to reformat the drive with the Motif first since modern drives don’t come formatted as FAT16 any more.