External HD vs Internal Laptop Drive for music storage?

First off you are right in playing music from internal HDD in first place.
And to have a backup at home constant updated is a must!
Your laptop can not only crash, but it can be stolen so that is a must IMO!

The best way to keep a copy with you should be to store it in a USB drive.
Do you need 150GB music ?? (I have now less than 60Gb and it covers from the 50s untill todays EDM all genres.)
I do on the other hand not see why it would help you top bring the extra HDD or USB stick if your laptop failed??

If I was to play on giggs with my Denon MC6000 i would have a couple of mixtapes on my iPhone and cable ready to plug it in direct to MC6000 if something went wrong with my laptop……

Do you not have a controller that can take external soundsources??
Then you should get a cable (or splitcable) so that you can plug in an external soundsource (mp3 player or phone) direct to the PA or mixer that you connect your controller to IMO.
That way you can reboot your compouter without the music stopping for more than a few sec.

I have pretty much the same setup as the OP. I play my music off a WD passport with a 2nd identical WD passport in my gig bag just in case. I think everyone is in agreement with regards to backing up though.

Back when I started DJ’ing a few people advised me that you don’t want to use the internal HD, & honestly I don’t know the rationale but it stuck with me. I also do a lot of production where I prefer using my desktop and keep my laptop more for DJ’ing so having everything on an external HD just makes sense as far as portability ….but this reasoning prob doesn’t apply to most others.

I am new to djing but not to hardrives and if anything your computer will read songs off your internal drive faster than an external unless your are using USB 3.0 also some hdd have a slower RPM which is what i have been having problems with. 5400rpm(common) takes too long to load my songs (about 2-3 secs of load). I suggest having the music you are going to play on your laptop and still carry your hdd (external just incase)

Well I am new to digital DJing, but I work with Apple Computers for about 20 years now in my daytime job.

As I am an old DJ I have a huge song collection and its about 200 gigs, since I really converted all my vinyls (yeah call me crazy). Now playing from an internal drive is really really cool, but playing and juggling songs from an external USB 2 or better will also be no problem for any Mac. However if you play small loops and samples, the latency of USB might be a showstopper for you.
Again this can easily be solved (and I suppose same goes for windows) if you use a firewire drive, as they are much lover latency in the protocol. Most HP laptops I know also have firewire ports nowadays.
If you are in for spending some real money however I just had a crazy setup for testing on my desk (sadly it was only for show and I had to give it back AAAAHHH): MacBook 15inch with internal SSD drive. – no moving parts – fast as hell, this thing can take it in your hands and shake it like a mixing bowl and it will still play your songs. And the external thunderbolt SSD we tried on it from Vestax was no slower (if not faster) than the internal SSD.
Downside… that rig costs a ton and the distributer pulled it out of my hands even when I started crying hehe

So the general approach internal is faster will go away once more companies will adopt thunderbolt devices and SSDs get cheaper. (Intel today announced a close to 50% price drop in SSDs in the coming months) In the long run I will definitely go that way.

I’m a fan of going internal when you don’t need a lot of music. External if you need a very large amount.

So when I go play guest spots or something, I’ll just move files into my internal HD. If I was playing a larger event, or being resident somewhere, I’d bring the external.

WATCH YOUR STUFF!!!!!! People will steal those hard drives right out of the booth.