External Hard Drive

[ckpr2]

I prefer internal drive. Saves carting around extra drive and cable.
Also no danger of drive cable getting pulled out half way through a track.

[Daryll]

1tb internal on play out laptop , but only 500gb on backup , but that is plenty for me
Daryll

[DJColsie]

MacBook with 512gb internal SSD and Windows laptop with the same.

Both carry the same DJ software and the same copy of iTunes through iTunes Match.

[DazzyD]

I use 500gb external hds on both main playout and back up. Never really gone down the internal route as they just aren’t big enough. I know there are laptops with 1tb internals but I do wonder about the quality of them plus what compromises have been made with the other components to fit the tb internal.

I’ve just purchased 2 500gb external SSDs and am looking to swap everything over to them in the next couple of weeks. Expensive? Yes at £170 each but hopefully good for a few years yet.

You know that pretty much all hard drives are the the same physical dimensions, right? The HDD in your laptop is most likely a 2.5" unit (unless it's a newer Mac where the storage is soldered to the motherboard) and the external SSD's you bought are probably exactly the same...

...
Julian

Thats the first thing I thought of. Drives are the same dimensions regardless of their capacity (how much data they can hold).

I prefer internal drive. Saves carting around extra drive and cable.
Also no danger of drive cable getting pulled out half way through a track.

The other thing about external drives is they are more likely to take more knocks and physical punishment than internal drives because we treat our laptops with the utmost respect but people seem to think nothing of chucking external drives around.

I've noticed that 1Tb internal drives have been mentioned but this isn't a limit. The internal drive in my Asus is 1.5Tb which I split up in to 3 separate virtual drives. It works a treat and is quite fast. The whole laptop (Intel Core i3 processor with 4Gb RAM and the 1.5Tb drive) was a complete bargain at just over £500. I don't think I'll find a deal that good again! It's never wobbled running VDJ and, when I return to DJing, it will still be my star piece of kit!

[ukpartydj]

I've just got a standard spinning disk 500gb internal on my main laptop. More than enough for just DJing.

I have a super quick SSD on my desktop but for DJing I'm not sure there is any massive advantage.

Always internal though, I don't want one more cable to go wrong or one more thing to set up.

[rth_discos]

Internal for me.

I don't want another cable (my controller, dmx and mouse use up the 3 USB ports I have) and I don't want a USB hub.

It's another thing that can be forgotten and another thing to go wrong.

[DJ Jules]

The whole laptop (Intel Core i3 processor with 4Gb RAM and the 1.5Tb drive) was a complete bargain at just over £500. I don't think I'll find a deal that good again!

*cough* Asus i7 with 8Gb, dedicated Nvidia graphics, hybrid 1TB drive. £480.

Manufacturer recon on eBay. If you know a little bit about computers there aren't many reasons to buy new...

Julian

[DJWilson]

Eyeing up the following: http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/s_actio...-10164851.html

Budget is £400 and needs to meet the recommended specs for Virtual DJ (only used for music. No videos, lighting etc).

Any thoughts on the 4 above? Any better options you know of?

Thanks!

[ukpartydj]

If I had to buy from PC World (which I would never again), I would choose the Dell Inspiron.

I had an Inspiron a few years ago and it was okay, which was very dissapointing as I paid £700 for it and wasn't all that impressive. Also the screen could bend a bit which was odd haha!
I would advise a high clock speed as whilst I'm sure things have moved on I'm yet to be convinced that DJ software utilises multicores very well, even with multicore support turned on with Traktor a 5-year-old dual core 2.5GHz outperformed an i7 1.8GHz.

You can get a decent i7 business grade laptop (HP Elitebook, Dell Lattitude etc) rather than the flimsy consumer ones on ebay second hand for £200-250 with backlit keyboard, high clock speed and will survive being bashed around a bit.

If you do buy from PC world, I'd advise you buy another laptop as a backup because even with paying for their stupid knowhow insurance they take forever to repair simple errors and occasionally lose your laptop.