Discussion for Retina MBP Owners: Traktor Library on External HDD VS SDCARD VS TB

[DJZILCH]

ok first experiment with the transcend SD CARD (have just received in the mail the other day):

i noticed that moving the entire itunes library (with the XML) into the sd card is not good~

solution (or more like, experiment!):

Keep itunes folder (AND ENTIRE LIBRARY - for now) in the internal hard drive, go to preferences, change the settings of "itunes media folder" and point it to a folder in the sd card.

Make sure "copy files to itunes" is ticked in preferences, then go to itunes -> library -> Consolidate library

this will copy ALL your itunes media files into the external sd card, but keeping all the itunes installation files and XML file in the internal hdd (which consumes like not much at all). This will take awhile.

once this is done you can delete the "itunes media" from your internal hdd (freeing space) as they have already been copied to the external sd card - remember to keep backup!!!

what just happened:
1.) the itunes library management (xml etc) files are in your internal hdd
2.) your itunes library (music files) have now been moved, consolidated into external sd card. all further added to itunes will go straight here instantly (watch out for the space! in my case i only have 128GB so i must monitor my data "allowances")

for now this works fine, although i have not attempted to play out just yet with the external sd card library until further experimentation, everything seems stable to me (noticed not much slowdown, if any)

when you back up files dont forget to backup both your itunes folder (with the xml file) and the entire sd card periodically!

to be continued (still experimenting)

[mostapha]

I'd also suggest keeping very good, automatic, and redundant backups.

I'm still not 100% convinced that SD cards work for long-term storage. I mean....I guess people use them like that in phones. And I'm not saying it will fail....just....please keep backups.

[blatterjr]

I'd also suggest keeping very good, automatic, and redundant backups.

I'm still not 100% convinced that SD cards work for long-term storage. I mean....I guess people use them like that in phones. And I'm not saying it will fail....just....please keep backups.

SD cards these days have 100k write cycles... doubt we'd even get close to that with anything but stress testing. That said, I don't use them but i do back up in triplicate!

[mostapha]

That's good to know. I mean...the insanely old ones I use for my camera are still working fine. But somehow it concerns me.

[blatterjr]

That's good to know. I mean...the insanely old ones I use for my camera are still working fine. But somehow it concerns me.

Contacts will probably wear out before the flash memory!

[DJZILCH]

after some experiments i find that the Transcend jetdrive lite 128GB sd card may not be suitable for me

I find that everytime i close the lid off my macbook pro the drive auto ejects, and when i open the lid it takes a few seconds for the drive to mount again - i know this is not a big issue for most but somehow it bothers me, even when the screen goes to sleep sometimes, it ejects the drive and it remounts when i tap a key and awakens the pc, not sure why but i get this feeling that its not a totally "permanent" addition to my storage

it has not caused any issues yet but it kinda bothers me, I am still using it to store movies and lossless (non djing music) files, which works perfectly fine, but i suppose not really to store traktor/itunes music library

for now i am using the lacie thunderbolt but i really dont like the additional wires hanging out

still need to figure something out

[mostapha]

It's actually safer to do that. When the computer goes to sleep, it unmounts and powers down USB drives so that if the computer loses power, the drives aren't mounted when/if that happens.

I wouldn't worry about it.