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Advice for External Hard Drive

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  • March 11, 2013 at 12:59 am #37826
    niu02kevin
    Participant

    I use an Apple Tima Machine which wirelessly backsnup everything periodically. Or, more like, backs up different parts of my hard drive at different times. It holds 2TB of several different back-ups. nice but jot the cheapest option. Then I have two, 500 GB external drives that I keep two copies of all my photos, videos, and DJ music. Got em on sale at Newegg for about $70 each. There are also internet backup options which are growing more secure and popular. In a few years, all of my music will be on my cloud account and I will be able to access it at gigs to perform with. Don’t ya think this is coming?

    March 11, 2013 at 2:58 am #37830
    DJ Contour
    Participant

    Thanks for the response ! And the question you raise is definitely an interesting one. Would be a lot more convenient as long as you can connect to the Cloud when you need too.

    March 11, 2013 at 7:29 am #37834
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    I would love to share your confidence in cloud streaming your music at gigs. I may be too old :), but I am pretty positive it won’t happen for me. For starters I don’t want to be dependent on any kind of wireless connection for a thing like a succesful gig. Secondly, I don’t want my DJ laptop anywhere near online. I carry my stuff on my laptop, a spare hard disk, two USB sticks and still have a set of CD’s as backup. So no, no cloud based gigging for me lol.

    As far as backups go, good tips from Kevin and hopefully I can add a few things I consider best practice.

    • Starting at the beginnning, if you can’t use your laptop exclusively for DJ-ing, go dual boot and have a seperate install for DJ-ing. This prevents any problems caused with the other stuff you might do on your laptop to influence your DJ setup.
    • Once you have your DJ setup the way you want it, backup up a so-called image of your install to an external HD or network drive (NAS). This allows you to restore the laptop to working state really quickly. After making major changes (like new software, upgraded software, different hardware) always update your image.
    • Once that is done, turn off all network devices on the laptop (for the DJ install) and don’t activate them unless you need to upgrade/update your software.
    • Keep a copy of your music directory also on the HD and make sure to update as soon as you have made significant changes (several tools can automatically do this for you). Preferably keep the HD in a different physical location as your laptop.

    This way you will have a good starting point if things go wrong, your install image. Your music library (and you might include the files and settings created by your DJ software too) are safe on a seperate HD and can easily be restored. And without an active network/internet connection, no worries about obnoxious virus scanners starting their scans in the middle of a gig, viruses, malware, drive-by’s, key recorders, “dirty” mp3s, etx.
    Greetinx,
    C.

    March 11, 2013 at 12:02 pm #37836
    J-Zed
    Participant

    I have backups of pretty much everything I’ve ever downloaded and would need to pay a fee to re-download.
    My music folder is copied onto my MacBook, desktop and on my other laptop. I am SAFE! Got the playlists on MB and dt as well.
    Software I got backed up all over my external, same thing with any movies ect…

    It’s too easy for one little problem to ruin everything.

    March 11, 2013 at 1:43 pm #37842
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    I have 2 Freecom Firewire drives that I back up too and my music is also in the iTunes cloud…

    March 11, 2013 at 1:53 pm #37847
    niu02kevin
    Participant

    Of course I’m assuming that I’ll have 64 or 128 GB of RAM at that time and world-class speed wireless connection. Just hoping. I’ll be playing on my 21 inch iPad Pro which will have the virtual mixer of choice and virtual Technics decks and so-on. Heck, in the future, why even bither being present. We will probably stream live performances to anywhere in the world from our home studio with video feed of our screen and a little skype/facetime box in the corner so the crowd cam see my face.

    Hey that’s partially a good idea. Having my full Traktor Pro screen on monitors throughout the venue so the crowd can see what the DJ is up to. No track names or album artwork as that would spoil any surprises. I know a club where there is a balcony above the DJ booth and I frequently go above to watch what the performer is up to.

    I’m just wishing. And yes, I’m establishing a seperate user interface for DJing only to avoid random back-up attempts, incoming texts, facetime calls, and everything else that laptop does for me. Ultimately as was mentioned, it will be better to have a laptop for DJ only purposes. And several backup/just in case options ahould anything go wrong.

    When you guys say you have CDs, do you have CDs of mixes or previous performances, or just of a select library and you would perform CDJ style? I guess both. You could put on the mix cd while you work to get your DDJ gear together, then CDs of your partial library should things just not work out and the show must go on.

    March 11, 2013 at 5:02 pm #37857
    Michael Lawrence
    Participant

    I back up everything on my laptop every week or so. If somethign were to happend then I would def like to revert to the most recent update with no issues. Then I have some music on a memory stick (enough to get through a whole gig). Then I also save some of my mapping templates and things like that in my email.

    March 14, 2013 at 8:50 pm #37956
    Daniel Gaudette
    Participant

    http://www.wdc.com/fr/products/products.aspx?id=640

    This has been my harddrive…you can drop it you can spill beer on it…you can do what the hell you want with it! super solid, waterproof…and has a really easy backup software…2gb with the case ran me around 200$

    Worth every penny

    ***CHECK THE HARD CASE THAT YOU CAN ORDER WITH IT!

    March 14, 2013 at 11:43 pm #37965
    DJ Contour
    Participant

    Is there any back up software that is preferred for DJs such as to save my computer as a whole and still have my music with cue points and all that ? AND in regards to Flashdrives which I use, is there a way to save the music with the cue points and everything in it so it is ready to go once i plug it in?

    March 15, 2013 at 9:24 am #37993
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    DJ Connibis, post: 38121, member: 3937 wrote: Is there any back up software that is preferred for DJs such as to save my computer as a whole and still have my music with cue points and all that ? AND in regards to Flashdrives which I use, is there a way to save the music with the cue points and everything in it so it is ready to go once i plug it in?

    Hi,

    In the case of Traktor (which is what I predominantly use), best practice for me is to have both the Traktor Root folder and my music folder on a flashdrive (or external usb hd). Since I DO have two laptops, I have both my Traktor installs set to look for the root folder in M:TraktorRoot and for the music folder in M:TraktorMusic. I can easily switch laptops now, just connect the drive, make sure it is set as drive M: and start Traktor. It will now use all the settings and music as they sit on the flasdrive, so including cue points, controller settings, screen settins, everything.

    Any imaging software will do for making an exact copy of your computers hard drive. I use Acronis True Image (paid version) but there are a few free ones out there too for both windows and mac.

    I know about Macrium Reflect Free (Windows), Paragon (also Windows) and Clonezilla (Windows, Mac & Linux) to name a few, but haven’t used any of them recently, so can’t comment on their quality. Most will allow you to both make an entire disk backup up as backups of certain folders (like your Traktor and Music folders). Backup and imaging software doesn’t alter your files, so what you backup is what you have available for restore.

    Greetinx,
    C.

    March 15, 2013 at 9:26 am #37994
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    DJ Dawa, post: 38112, member: 4255 wrote: http://www.wdc.com/fr/products/products.aspx?id=640

    This has been my harddrive…you can drop it you can spill beer on it…you can do what the hell you want with it! super solid, waterproof…and has a really easy backup software…2gb with the case ran me around 200$

    Worth every penny

    ***CHECK THE HARD CASE THAT YOU CAN ORDER WITH IT!

    Uhm … 2GB for 200 dollar? I am guessing 2TB ?

    Greetinx,
    C.

    March 15, 2013 at 10:32 am #37996
    Daniel Gaudette
    Participant

    Chuck van Eekelen, post: 38150, member: 2756 wrote: Uhm … 2GB for 200 dollar? I am guessing 2TB ?

    Greetinx,
    C.

    Lol thanks for the correction! Maybe would’ve paid that price 20 years ago for 2gb!

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