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Topic: Which Hard-Drive????????

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Hey guys What's up?
its me again probably with another stupid question. but however
I was wondering do you guys store your music library on your computers hard drives or do you use external hard-drives
I know from experience that external hard-drives do not live long when exposed to the hustle and bustle of the DJ life.
so does any1 out there have any tips in how to keep safe your external hard-drives?
regards
 
Posted Sat 22 May 10 @ 2:23 am
SSD is the best answer ;-)
 
I usually build my own computers, but I put in a small harddrive (80gb) for the O/S and any relevant software, then a second Hard drive usually 1TB for the music library.

But I also bring an External Drive for Back-up or if I work at a bar/club that has VDJ installed, I just bring the Drive.

I wouldn't worry much about External drives not lasting long, I've had one I've used for about 3 years now and it's lasted. Even with a jealous DJ "dropping" it off the counter in the DJ booth, but that's another story.
 
Personally I keep all my music on my MacBook HD. But, on the subject of external HDs not lasting long; I had a Western Digital external HD and I accidently dropped it from a height of only about 1 foot and the HD was toast. My suggestion is to have at the very least a second back-up external HD because the last thing you want is to lose all music because your eggs are all in one basket so to speak. External HDs are small enough nowadays that carrying around two is not cumbersome, and cheap enough to easily be able to afford more than one. Having a second back-up external HD is a small price to pay for peace of mind. In my case I have all my music on one MacBook, on a second identical MacBook, and two external HDs (one I bring with me to gigs, and the other I keep at home). That way the only way I'll lose the music collection I spent the better part of two years ripping, organizing and tweaking is if someone robs me at gunpoint for my computer bag AND my house burns down at the same time. I know a DJ who had all his music on one external HD with no back-up (because he was too cheap to buy a second external HD), his HD died and he was left with having to start his music collection from scrap. I asked him, "If you could have all your music back for $99 would you pay it?", "Of course!" he replied, then you should have bought that second $99 hard drive dumbass lol.
 
hahahah love the stories i have plently of backup up and i keep a hard-drive with me all times learnt that lesson the hard way. i was wondering on which is best to store on due to performace levels on my laptop. the is 500gbs space and 200 of that is music so there is about 260 left blank. 40 due to programs etc..
i was just worried about performace rather than anything else... as next week i am going to wipe the hole computer and start from the start again with an Os so i wanted to get it rite from the start.
tell ya one thing buddy i have spend hours and days trying to sort out all the doubles and cds that i burnt onto the laptop for parties etc.. did i remember to name and tag them nah sure i said to myself that sure its only one cd.. and that was a year and a half ago. lol
 
If you are using a laptop to dj... Incase the Hard drive is small, replace the internal with a bigger one. I have all my music inside the laptop. I have backup's in externals.
 
thanks for the help guys
 
I have used Both Western Digital My Book and Seagate Free Agent Extreme 1 & 1.5 TB external hard drives. I have had problems with the Seagate but the Western Digital My Books have worked flawlessly. I did a You Tube video on this subject last year.


DJ RuDe
 
Ive used the seagate freeagent for the past 4 years with no issues, 500gig, 1tb and 2tb models, but I have also only used the ones that support firewire.

When you buy a new drive for more space, ALWAYS buy two of them and regularly backup. Cant afford a second external Hard Drive? Can you also afford to lose all your converted music or have the time to get it all back again?
 
As far as Hard Drives go, I have always had best success with Seagate drives. Western Digitals are also great and slightly cheaper in the US.
If you can afford to always have a spare PC/Laptop incase of an OS failure. I carry a spare that is sync'ed up every week or so and sawp them out from gig to gig. I also have a spare ghosted 2.5 HD for my laptops incase. and you can never have too many backups of your library.

If you can affor one get a 5 Drive RAID 5 hardware array it is about $1000 for 4TB of data and you will be safe.
If a drive goes out you slide in a new one and away you go.. with 1TB Sata 2 drive at $50-75 it is a life saver.
Just leave it at home...!! don't transport it..! use externals for that..! and make sure you never use the USB bus to power your drives always use a power supply or if needed a powered USB hub.

Here is a starting point for a 4 drive raid...$399 plus drives.. Great piece of gear.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4292856&CatId=4269

Seagate black armour NAS...$439
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4629734&csid=_21



Good luck..!
 
detlefthe wrote :
SSD is the best answer ;-)


Still prone to failure.. and lacks storage capacity.
 
I always buy the drives that come with eSata, USB & Firewire
 
i always use seagate hard drives... but is it better to store you music on the external hard drives and keep your computers hard drive free or put your music on computers hard drive while you are doing a gig?
in performance terms?
 
Don't just rely on multiple external drives as backup because they will be useless if your laptop fails. Get a stand-alone unit that can control external drives, such as a Denon HD2500.

And you should still have a CD player that plays Mp3 CDs as further backup.
 
My Pioneer CDJ-400s can be used with a hard drive standalone too
 
people who "accidentally" drop hard drives should be accidentally beaten with an sm58 ......
 
believe it or not drives can take a beating... (or maybe i am lucky)

this is what I did to solve my problem ":


I rigged my coffin so that my external HD can live with my turntables and Mixer.
The Coffin i have has the slide out top for and sound card. the soundcard slot is big enough for my
soundcard, harddrive and headphone(dont you hate forgetting headphones!!!).
the position of the slide is in the middle of the unit so will not take a hard hit even is the coffin is dropped.

u can get 2tb externals now for just over $100..



 
LaCie Rugged series hard drives are designed to handle abuse (supposedly shock proof up to 2.2 meters, but I wouldn't want to try it!), and come with many options (esata, firewire, USB 2.0 and 3.0). You see these in use with a lot of touring club DJs. Kind of expensive, but worth it for something that won't die if you drop it.
 
i have had them "ooops sorry didnt mean to spill my drink on your gear"
haters lol i have cd back up and an external hard drive back ups as well so i am good that way... but if you store all the music on the laptop are you slowing the performance?..
 
I too would recommend Western Digital external drives, I've just upgraded to the My Book Essential 2TB models which has the WD Smartware that allows you to disable the sleep mode. Previous to that I was running with the 1T version for 2 years with no problems
 


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