music storage

Gentlemen...I been djing for 5 years ..I im using traktor s4 with a sony viao ..what is the best way to store a tera byte of music?? Ive been using a western digital my book ..is there a more reliable external drive u guys might recommend? ? Also is a drive without a power supply better?? Thanks in advance

 

Hi,

if you use the external hdd while you are djing, i would prefer a external drive with NO external power supply. Just because if theres a power cut for only a few seconds, your external drive will shut down for a few seconds. there are also externla hdds which use 2 usb plugs for additional power.

greetz

 

My IT brain is going to give you its response. That depends on purpose/intent and budget. You have to consider things such as speed, redundancy, reliability. There are so many possible solutions, but the simplest solution is the obvious: self-powered usb external hard drive. Price and performance will go up from there.

 

Whatever you decide, buy two, and keep a backup of your files for when the inevitable drive failure happens. If you have 1TB of music, you want to have a safe copy somewhere!

 

Xman..so your saying that a external hd with its own power supply is more reliable?..

 

In my experience, an external hard drive with its own power supply isn't any more reliable than one powered only by usb. I've used older 5400 rpm 320 GB Western Digital passport hard drives that had a dual-usb connection from the pc to a mini-usb connection on the hard drive. I've had it for 5 years and no problems. It's fairly slow though. I've also used an external Maxtor 1.5 TB with an external power supply. It has a much faster response time (at least 1-2 seconds faster).

There just so many combinations available these days. Some pc's only have usb 2.0, others have usb 3.0, or eSATA, firewire, lightning, etc. I would recommend using the usb 3.0 or eSATA if possible (obviously lightning if you have a recent Mac), otherwise select external hard drives that are 7200 rpm or faster. If you don't need a massive amount of external hard drive space, consider purchasing a solid state drive. 256 GB SSD's are somewhat reasonably priced now, and should be sufficient for your music library. All consumer brands have been reliable. Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate. As far as SSD's, Intel, OCZ, Samsung (but there are now so many brands, I would recommend doing more research).