AKAI Z4

ian-s · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 2:36 pm Post subject: AKAI Z4

A friend in Switzerland has just got an Akai Z4 sampler, which did not come with a hard drive. Anyone have any experience with these? Some web sites mention that the USB host connection can be used for external USB CD writers, so does this mean getting any off the shelf PC/MAC USB burner will work as primary storage?

Joe Misra · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:25 pm Post subject:

I looked into this once, but the compatibility list I was able to get was from 2002 and a lot of drives had issues noted by them. When I called them up the tech couldn't provide a list and actually recommended using a SCSI drive instead!

The harddrives used are standard IDE drives however- I'm not positive but he should be able to hook up any old drive, it should support it without any special config.

jksuperstar · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:57 pm Post subject:

Standard IDE HD I've heard (no experience), but look into 2 things:
1.) does the Akai Z4 support formatting drives itself? If so, then most likely any IDE drive will do.

2.) If not, then find out what formats it does support...FAT32 most likely. Then format the drive on a PC (or whatever) before connecting & booting up.

Joe Misra · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 4:03 pm Post subject:

Yes, just checked the manual, it will format disks. It uses FAT32 for drives larger than 2gb, FAT16 for smaller ones.