Discussion for Retina MBP Owners: Traktor Library on External HDD VS SDCARD VS TB
hi there guys!
been absent here for awhile due to change in career, recently gained some extra time from work and would like to go back into the whole djing for fun timez (nothing serious - one gig a week at most)
Situation: Retina macbook pro 13 inch, work laptop with 500GB SSD, i try to keep my laptop as clean as possible as i use it for my work mainly (in fact the office paid for it - hehe)
at home i jam with my iMac which is permanently hooked up to my home rig (Traktor S2 MK2), when i play out i use my rMBP with X1 + Audio6 + timecode (Both USB PORTS used up!) - i like to use an external device to store my library so i can jump between both with ease (possible?)
So between these options, what do you guys find the best for stability?
SDCARD (256GB) - enough for my entire library - but i question the stability and speed even on the highest spec sd cards? anyone has experience permanently using these to store their dj library?
Thunderbolt External HD (1TB - 2TB) - way more expensive and doesnt use any usb port , the thing is im kinda scared of having the thunderbolt as I have no experience with its stability or the tb jack / cable sliding off? i heard the TB ports are a bit more loose?
External HDD (USB 3.0) with powered usb hub, this one i dont like so much because having to cary a powered usb hub on top of the external hdd is a bit of a drag (heh)
Let’s discuss! Would love to hear your opinion
also anyone using an external hd to store their ENTIRE traktor collection? how do you guys manage it so its “plug and play” as in you can plug between your home desktop imac and your gig laptop and keep all the library and playlists intact?
a non spinning flash drive (sd card) in theory would be (again - in theory) most stable compared to spinning hard drives in shaky club environment? if anyone is doing this successfully please share your experience here
SD cards are incredibly slow. Will it work? Idk. I use them for my camera and nothing else.
If it were me, I’d probably put an SSD in a TB chassis and tape the cable to the laptop if I were worried about it coming out, but I’d prefer to just upgrade the internal storage if I were able. I think you can put a 480gb drive in the rMBPs, it’s just expensive.
I disagree just because they don’t die if they’re dropped.
But, then, I don’t have any spinning platters anywhere in my home except in my 16TB NAS and think hard drives are not worth putting up with for any purpose except archive storage.
Lols, you dont have any spinning platters apart from the huge number in you 16TB Nas. Thats an enormous amount of storage on a format you wont put up with
It’s also a NAS. It’s limited by the 4x100Mbit connection to my lan, which is fast enough for automatic backups and streaming HD movies to all my junk, which is all I use it for.
I keep a smallish back up collection on that card, so I can use my work computer as a back up if necessary. I haven’t had to use it in a gig situation yet, but all the testing i’ve done with it appears to work fine.
The main advantage of the nifty mini drive is that it doesn’t stick out, so can stay in your machine all the time.
There’s also this product from Transcend, that’s available as a 128Gb drive.
yes i decided to get it (like a few minutes ago) so i dont have any extra wires to carry, i did hear some scary stories about the card being “accidentally” ejected when you close the lid of the retina macbook pro (and apparently its almost impossible to remove the card - by design) but i guess i would have to find out for myself
when it arrives from amazon im gonna move my itunes library into the sdcard (my itunes library after careful sorting has been reduced to about 100GB only) and test how it works with traktor and see if theres any lag or even crash while using the device - a little bit worried as i dont think many people are doing this now, nor that traktor was designed to work this way but im willing to find out haha!
i went to a local shop to buy/see a thunderbolt external hard drive and they are all seem so expensive and the thought of another cable hanging off my mac is not too good (with the X1 and Audio6 already in)
I’ve had no ejecting problems with the nifty mini drive & a 13" MacBook Air. The only time the drive “unmounts” without any intervention from me is if battery power gets down to approx 12%.
So stay above that, & you’ll be fine. (presumably not an issue on a gig, as you’ll be hooked up to mains power). Although it might be worth doing some homework to see if the SD card slot is on the same USB bus as the USB sockets? …drawing too much current from them could possibly create problems?
I need to double check my back up rig again now, & see if it’s stable. I presume i’ll be fine, as my controller (VCI 380) isn’t bus powered.
Was referring to physically disconnecting…as in the wire getting pulled out. Some places I play are tight and people always lean over my rig. I will start taping it if it ever happens though
It also would low me to ditch my usb hub since I only have it for the external drive and an F1
Given that, a USB3 external drive has been fine for me performance wise, although I don’t run my whole set off of it. Most of my tracks are on the internal SSD.
Would love to hear your opinion
I don’t think I’ve ever dropped a hard drive ever. Not really a concern for me.