External Hard Drives for DJ'ing and on the road

Hey,

Just wanting a bit of help regarding external hard drives. I am looking for a RELIABLE, STURDY and small enough portable hard drive that is both compatible with mac and windows.

I currently have one which is 3tb but its too big, requires a power lead and for some reason does not show up on my friends computers (windows) but works fine on mine (MAC). I am aware that I had to change the format when I bought the hard drive so it showed up on mine but not sure why its not showing up on anyone elses and not going to reformat and lose all my data. I would like one that can function without a power lead for on the road use, but maybe has a power lead as well (for reliability).

I am wondering what other on the road DJ's use and swear by when it comes to DJ'ing with an external hard drive on the road. There is so much variety out there that I do not want to waste my money on a mediocre one as this will be a very stable part of my DJ'ing and probably will require too. Looking one with as large as possible storage as well.

Cheers :)
M

Personal Experience: WD suck
What I've read on the net': WD Suck

*WD is Western Digital

I have 4 WD drives, 2 portable and 2 wired. Both portable ones dont work anymore, had one for about 3 years and the other for about a year.

Go SeaGate or LaCie, buy whatever size depending on what you need, I'm NOT sure that 3TB Portable drives are made yet, and if they are, they won't be that cheap. I don't put all my eggs in one basket and I also have back-up drives of everything I have.

I was looking about and LaCie look like maybe the one I am swaying towards because of the sturdiness ( I read you can drive a 1 ton car over it and it still works!)

Though I think the highest they go is 1TB which is fine for me. I will probably end up buying two or else just keep all my other data on my other 3tb one. Basically I only really need the one for DJ'ing and would prefer another one for Music/ Movie Production but the production one would not be so much on the road but in the house all the time.

And I can not seem to get my head around why the bigger one of these is nearly $100 dearer than the other. To me the 'mini' one seems better as its smaller. Performance wise even the cheaper, smaller one seems faster or am I missing something here?

Mini
http://www.topbuy.com.au/tbcart/pc/L...ch_words=lacie

Regular
http://www.topbuy.com.au/tbcart/pc/1...ch_words=lacie

The regular is Thunderbolt, hence why it's more expensive. It has USB3 and Thunderbolt capabilities, the other one is just USB3. Thunderbolt is much, much quicker.

If you're looking for over-all speed performance, HDD is not the way to go, even though SSD is still a bit expensive, give it a few years, probably half a year (at the rate technology moves) and it'll be cheap, it's more reliable and a lot, lot faster than HDD. I essentially run SSDs for production type stuff and then HDD for storage.

I'd just like to say, I would avoid using an external hard drive for gigging at all if possible. I don't know about any of you but in my experience they can cause all sorts of isssues in live situations.

I wouldn't risk a hard drive tbh. For a set, you're only going to need to play for what... 5-6 hours? If you're not taking requests and/or mainly playing commercial, with good song selection in advance you can get away with only having double, maybe triple that in terms of track time - that's only maybe 5gb at a high bitrate unless you're a lossless guy.

With that in mind, you can pack a HELL of a lot of music onto an SSD, or even a handful of USB sticks. Either solution is sold-state and therefore practically immune to damage, which is what you want when you're working :)

I am sorry, maybe looking back on my original comment I made it out as if I was going to be using the hard drive to directly DJ off. That is not the case. The Hard drive is really only intended as a means of storing my music collection as back up and some files that are taking up room on my laptop and that I never really use. I do not intend to play from my hard drive. More of an, on the road back up and if needs be, be able to maybe play off it if all else fails (on another laptop, I have a back up). There is music that I want to put on the hard drive that I would not play at 90/99% of my gigs but I would like to have it on my HD just in case the moment arises. I mean I do not want to keep 60's 70's 80's etc. (Its not what I play) on my laptop because it takes up too much room and gets played once a year tops probably at a family event or party. I want this all off my laptop but I do not want to lose it completely and want to have it on me 'just in case'. I am aware how hard drives should not be relied upon for playing off as even my usb ports are messing about on my mac which I am not happy about at all considering its only 4/5 months old and bought brand new!!!.

So this may be a stupid question but forgive me in advance. Are any of the Lacie external hard drives I was looking at SSD? I am not sure what SSD and HDD is :(

SSDs are solid state; HDDs have spinning disks inside them. You can spot the difference because an SSD will be in the region of a few hundred gigs, a HDD will be 2-3TB in size.

ahhh right i get you now. I think I have seen them before. Very expensive, and a few hundred gb wont cut it I dont think :( I wont have the money to buy multiple amounts of SSD HD's. I think I might opt for the Lacie one for the meantime. Cheers again people for the help. Much appreciated :)