Backup
Hi,
I was wondering how you guys make sure you have a good working computer at a gig, do you always have a backup harddisk or a full mirror of your system with you?
Sorry for my english 
grz
I’ve been doing this to keep my work computer and home computer’s libraries synced.
What I do is two things. I have a copy of my setlist (always) backed up online (via my server), on my USB drive, and on two seperate ipods. I also always practice before and record my sessions and have a session (which ever I feel like was the best run) saved hidden on Sound Cloud. So incase of the worst case scenario, I can still just log onto Sound Cloud and hit play.
As a complete last resort I always have a recording of a previous set saved on my iPhone just in case.
But most times we have some audio CD’s on with us so we are ready to move onto CD-DJ’s just in case. Hopefully giving us enough time to sort out any issues, or if not we can still rock out a set
There’s no reason to keep an image of your hard drive with you at a gig. It takes the length of a normal set to restore a normal-sized drive image…especially if you use USB2 like most people.
Mix on the iPhone…don’t suck at computers. Oh…and buy a Mac.
Create a dual boot system and switch boots on fail. I haven’t tried it myself but I am pretty sure you could build out a second boot to an eSATA external disk. That should get you up and running in less than 120 seconds.
If you use a mac and put an SSD in a Firwire chassis, you could boot from your backup inside 20 seconds without a problem.
It’s also overkill. If you’re not dumb, it’s not hard to make a computer stable nowadays…biggest issue is running windows without a virus scanner, a server without a good firewall and secure authentication, and realistically…overheating.
In years of DJing with a laptop off and on, I’ve had 2 “crashes.” One was caused by a faulty turntable not sending proper time code to SSL…the other was my Macbook overheating because I was dumb enough to sit it next to the exhaust fan of an amplifier.