I’m new to these forums and getting back to dj’ing after an 8 year break (life gets in the way sometimes). So although I’m a vet when it comes to spinning, last time I did I gig I had to carry turntables, and crates of vinyl with me.
In other words I’m a digital newb.
My questions is, what do you think is the best way to store/back up your digital music? I have a macbook pro and up until recently I had been using its hard drive to store all my music, but I dont want to fill up the entire HD with just music. Yesterday I bought a small portable 250 Gig HD.
What do you all recommend I do to either use the portable drive as the only place I store my music files or a way that I can not fill up the laptop’s HD?
Thanks in advance and happy new year!. If there is a thread about this that I have missed please direct me there and feel free to lock this.
I think you should have two external drives. This is how I want to have it set up when I have all my stuff together.
Your internal drive will be for the music you are spinning actively. This drive will not always have the same tunes on it. Sometimes you will move things off as they leave your playlists.
You have an external drive in your apartment with all of your music. This is so when you decide to move files off of your internal drive you will still have access to them.
You have another external drive you use for regular (weekly/monthly) backups. This is kept somewhere outside of your home (safe deposit box/parent’s house/friend’s house, etc.) in case of some sort of emergency (fire/theft/damage/etc.). I’d recommend the two externals leaving you lots of headroom in space because, well, those things fill up fast.
Something to keep note off as well. If your useing a backup program (and not just copying and pasteing) Watch out when you rename your files…because you might end up with double the amount of songs if the backup program dosnt delete the old filenames
Thank you both for the info. very helpful. I’m only running the mac backup system which backs up absolutely everything on it.
As Krilikz mentioned I did try creating a folder named “Music” on the portable drive, and when I dragged one song to it, It created a double file. Is that normal? If not how should I handle it? Am I supposed to drag the file(s), then delete the original? in the laptop’s HDD?
If you change the file name e.g.( Daft Punk - One more time.mp3) to (Daft Punk-One More Time.mp3) you will get two diffrent files. (Not there is no space on the hypens.
They way i do it is i focus on one genre a day (considering my collection to organized by Music>Genre>SubGenre(or Year if pop) So after im done working with the POP folder i delete from my external harddrive and copy and paste it back on from my desktop harddrive/
Do you mean I can use the portable drive the same way I would use a memory card? I cant just click and drag files back and forth?
I obviously feel and probably sound like a total newb. I dont really understand why I would need to change the file names.
Another thing. I use Traktor Scratch Pro, if I “move” a song to the portable drive and delete it on the macbook, would I also “lose” the file settings on TSP whenever I bring it back? (I mean things like hotcues, loops, etc)
Yes a flash drive(Memory Card) is basically the same thing as a External Harddrive
You dont need to change the file names, However if you ever want to manage your songs outside of your software it might get confusing. One thing you do need though is the id3tags to be correct inside the mp3 file. I fix them all up at the same time
No you will not loose the settings. Traktor writes these settings to the id3tag so it will permanently be stored to that file.
-Have my music on the macbook
-Drag the files to the portable drive
-Delete the files on the macbook
At that point, should I need to access the files, is the best way to access them by moving them back to the laptop? or should I plug in the HDD and retreive them that way?
Should I have a file stored in BOTH drives at the same time or in just one?
What im trying to say is if you update your file names you will need to delete the music folder on the back up drive and just copy and paste a new one(else you will have 2 of every song you renamed).
You want to keep your Internal Harddrive as your primary source of playing music. Its more reliable.
Okay, for backing up… when working with two hard drives you should have your complete collection on each drive, organized in whatever way you see fit. When backing up onto your external drive it might be easiest just to delete the entire collection out of your external drive and back up from scratch.
That way you will have all of your updated tags and everything.
My example was with 3 hard drives. My complete collection would be on the two externals and a modified one on my internal drive that I use for live use.
With two drive, though, you would want two totally identical copies of your collection, backed up at scheduled times
Thank you very much for the feedback guys. I think I have a better understanding of how this works.
This is how I thought it would be like: You see…I belong to an online digital record pool. What I wanted to do is use the portable drive as the destination of my music files when I download them (right now when I dwnld them they get automatically opened by itunes and saved on my macbook’s HDD).
I would then organize them on the portable drive and if say, for example I need access to my breakbeats, soul, or funk , I can just grab the folder, move it to the macbook and take that to my gig, then get back home and dump the folder back on the portable. (Either that, or just plug the portable into the macbook at the gig and pull the music from there but I hear that is not very reliable)
I guess my main reason for that was to save space on my laptop’s hard drive because there is a ton of music that although I may not need often, I would still love to own and have access to at any given time.
Does that make sense? I’m sorry to trouble you with nooby questions and I thank you for your assistance.
What you might want to do, when you re-import the folder to the external, just delete the old one and put whatever was on your Laptop onto the external fresh.
That way you will update the tags and stripes and all.
I ran into the same problem a while ago, as i was backing up all my music on an external hard drive, i then put some folders back on my PC and over time i did edit the mp3 tags, then when i moved them back to the external it was duplicated, because i had changed titles, artists, etc.
I had to sort through the mess and find the most current songs and delete the duplicates. I did try just cutting and pasting for a while, but that i find defeats the purpose of having a back-up drive.
Hey eddie there is a way. If you have a mac you will go to itunes/preferences/advanced and then you will tell your mac to save it on your external. But the best way will be to grab the itunes music folder and drag it to your external, it will copy over that folder, then delete the original. Now, before you click on the itunes icon, hold option. This will allow you choose the itunes folder, locate it on your external and all of your preferences, playlist, and music will load. From there on, your itunes will use that folder to boot from.
on a windows the first step will still work, but the rest I have no idea.
You will have to have itunes plugged in, since itunes is locating the itunes folder in the specific folder you assign to it. But for example, I have multiple itunes libraries and I always option boot from my internal or external hard drive. If itunes cant find the itunes folder to boot from, it will prompt you to create a new one, find it or create a new one. The choice is yours.
yes it’s tricky to keep things up to date the more you have but you will be glad that you have them when a drive breaks. I take two ext HDD (1 backup) and store another backup on a Drobo at home (expensive but brilliant), I also give a another EXT HDD to a friend and update regularly (once every 3 months). that way if 1 breaks on the road I’ve got a spare and if the house burns down whilst I’m at home I’ve got offsite storage too.
DON’T FORGET TO BACK UP THE COLLECTION FILES AND STRIPES (OR WHAT YOU USE FOR YOUR DJ SOFTWARE)
DON’T JUST THINK ABOUT IT EITHER!!! DO IT!!! BEFORE SOMETHING DOES GO WRONG BECAUSE IT WILL SOONER OR LATER.
