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OllieJames
20-11-2010, 04:43 PM
Hi all,

I've just bought a new laptop; Acer Aspire 5734z w/ 4GB RAM, 2.3GHz Dual Core processor etc etc.

I wanted to know how you store your music? Do you store it on your laptop HDD, or an external HDD? Since using VDJ on my desktop computer for gigs, I've always stored it on the internal HDD - but I'm interested to hear your views!

What external HDD's do you use? USB? Firewire?

Cheers,
Ollie

DeckstarDeluxe
20-11-2010, 04:47 PM
My laptop is purely for DJing so all it has is OS, VDJ and my tunes on its own HD.

Works well enough for me.

OllieJames
20-11-2010, 05:20 PM
My laptop is purely for DJing so all it has is OS, VDJ and my tunes on its own HD.

Works well enough for me.

Excellent, thanks Neil. This new laptop is purely for DJing too! :)

Booche
20-11-2010, 08:02 PM
Coming from a similar situation Ollie ive just took my internal hdd out of Disco pc and put it in a external case also my internal isn't big enough to hold all the music so external was more ideal for me :)

Was in two minds to plug it into the cortex hdc100 BUT like above there is quite alot of music on it so decided external was the best and most easiest way for me :)

DeckstarDeluxe
20-11-2010, 08:18 PM
Oh Ollie what files are you saving here? Just 320kps mp3's like myself or higher quality wav files which take up roughly ten times the disk space?

Before anyone comments and goes off topic about telling the difference its been done in other threads but the reason I'm asking is I dont think internal HD's are big enough to keep an entire collection of Wav files?

OllieJames
20-11-2010, 10:57 PM
Mine are MP3s, Neil. I don't see the point in using WAVs for mobile speaker systems - but we won't go there in this thread ;) :d

I've gone ahead and loaded the songs on to the laptop for now, as they don't take up much room! I will buy a good external HDD though...

DJ James Lake
21-11-2010, 01:07 AM
Ollie before you do any gigging with it get a spare power supply, I have had three acer laptops and on every one the power supplies have died.

With regards to storing the files on your laptops drive, thats fine until the point you want to move them. If your still using VDJ when you moved them as the drive letter will change all your playlists wont work.

You can get round this as most acers have the hard drive partitioned.

You probably have a c and d drive showing as your hard drive, if you do change the drive letter on the d driver to something like m: then if you get a bigger external driver you and mover them onto that as long as the folder structure is still them same and make its driver letter m: and all your playlists will work as before.

Vectis
21-11-2010, 01:11 AM
You may also wish to check that however you eventually end up moving files around is in compliance with ProDub...

Dynamic Entertainment
21-11-2010, 02:25 AM
Only 8 posts in and ProDub got mentioned ;)

Anyway, I use a External USB hard drive so as to bypass the produb requirement. I download the MP3 directly to the hard drive using my desktop PC so as not to ever have my DJing laptop connected to the interweb.

Daryll
21-11-2010, 07:53 AM
All my files are stored on the laptop , plus the whole lot is also on a 500gig lacie external drive as well , I tend to run off the external drive.

Daryll

DazzyD
21-11-2010, 09:41 AM
Pretty much the same as Dynamic above. I use my home laptop and 7Digital (mostly) to download direct to my external HDD which connects to the disco laptops.

As James said, it's always wise to have a spare power supply - both for the laptop and the external HDD. The only time I've ever had a problem with using a laptop was when the power supply died on the external HDD. Once bitten, twice shy!

However, I do think that the issue of renaming/reassigning drive letters is not really necessary as refreshing the search database is a much neater solution and doesn't take too much time. Also, reassigning drive letters may stop othe software and OS components from running.

DJ James Lake
21-11-2010, 02:16 PM
However, I do think that the issue of renaming/reassigning drive letters is not really necessary as refreshing the search database is a much neater solution and doesn't take too much time. Also, reassigning drive letters may stop othe software and OS components from running.

Refreshing the database is fine for the search database but it wont relocate tracks stored in VDJ playlists. Acer laptops are normally partitioned and the D drive is used as a storage drive so renamong it wont effect any other software or OS.

Re assigning the drive letter is the only way to stop problems later on when changing drives with VDJ. I found out this the hard way some time ago.

DazzyD
21-11-2010, 02:21 PM
Refreshing the database is fine for the search database but it wont relocate tracks stored in VDJ playlists. Acer laptops are normally partitioned and the D drive is used as a storage drive so renamong it wont effect any other software or OS.

Re assigning the drive letter is the only way to stop problems later on when changing drives with VDJ. I found out this the hard way some time ago.

I get you now! I don't use playlists - I do all the music selection on the fly which is where my confusion lies.

I can see the issue with playlists, though.

Megamix
21-11-2010, 02:32 PM
used an external HD until one gig it fell out the port - so moved to internal

1878blues
25-11-2010, 01:52 PM
you should partition your hard drive into two separate operating services, one solely for djing. Then buy an external hard drive to store all your music on.
Regards