External Hard drives?


Number2Fan

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I pretty much need one, what are they, what size is good for tons of music, and how do you use them?

I know nothing except my Laptop is full, I gotta save all my tunage so far, and then restore factoy settings, and begin again, but in a more organised and knowledgable way.

Do you all have them?

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I got my first external drive December 2008 when my computer drive corrupted and I lost everything. I'm now on my 4th drive and its great. All of mine are 500GB and I've just filled this new drive with 50,000+ tracks along with some other files. Get two drives, and use one to back up the drive you plan to use all the time. Ideally get one which is powered by the computer via USB ... I have a drive which you need to plug into the mains as well and its a pain to use, especially if you turn up at a nightclub DJ'ing with it.

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I do recommend Freecom external drives - I've a 500GB one that has never let me down. You literally plug it in from the box and your computer recognizes it as another hard drive.

They're heavier than you think and the better USB ones need to be plugged into the mains, so external drives are not very portable (and they're not meant to be), but I've never had to move mine. It currently sits quietly on top of my MD player beside my laptop. Go onto Amazon.co.uk and search for "freecom external hard drive". I've got one of the older models with the nice brushed metal casing B)

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I've got a little USB powered 320 gig Seagate. I had to reformat my computer a while back (it had a virus called Windows Vista on it) & the Seagate was cheap & ideal for the job. Used it loads for music & stuff since.

Sorry to take this ot, but what problems had you with vista? I'm a total fool when it comes techie stuff, but I've got this laptop for about a year (new), and it has Vista on it. I've noticed it acting up a few times now and wondered if it's vista.

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Sorry to take this ot, but what problems had you with vista? I'm a total fool when it comes techie stuff, but I've got this laptop for about a year (new), and it has Vista on it. I've noticed it acting up a few times now and wondered if it's vista.

I had all sorts of problems with it. Towards the end I was having crashes, blue screens of death (this sort of thing), loads of errors occuring, etc. I thought my hard drive was on it's way out. I backed up everything I needed, wiped the hard drive & installed Windows 7 from scratch & I haven't had a problem since.

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I had all sorts of problems with it. Towards the end I was having crashes, blue screens of death (this sort of thing), loads of errors occuring, etc. I thought my hard drive was on it's way out. I backed up everything I needed, wiped the hard drive & installed Windows 7 from scratch & I haven't had a problem since.

Yes! It's done that blue screen thing a couple of times, firefox freezing on me etc. I thought it must be windows coz i did a load of virus scans and didn't find anything. Thank you!

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Yes! It's done that blue screen thing a couple of times, firefox freezing on me etc. I thought it must be windows coz i did a load of virus scans and didn't find anything. Thank you!

I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was caused by some automatic update but I'm not sure how true that is.

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you can get decent sized usb powered hard drives for laptops now days, in around 500gb-1tb variants

if you have a laptop you probably want a usb powered hard drive.

the difference is basically that USB powered hard drives use laptop hard drives inside them, and therefor are smaller, and dont require a power supply to be carried about, basically a laptop drive inside them, so uses less power.

the other type is the ones that need a power supply, which are bigger, but usually come in bigger sizes, but need the power supply box to be lugged around.

as i've a laptop i've got 3 external 2.5" usb powered hard drives.

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If (as I do) I inetend to keep al my music on my external hardrive, will I need another external hardrive as back up for that one, or do you back it up on discs.. coz surely it could break and if I have all that music on there.. that woud be a big big loss to me, both financially and sentimentally.

How much approx will fit onto a 500gb.. I think I may just go 1tb..

Now power source wont be an issue to me, I can sort that, and portability wont be either, but USB slots may be.

Will I need a Multi USB adapter as I already use my usb slots for splitting the monitor/main sound on virtual DJ?

:oddcake:

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depending how much money you have to spend you could always buy a NAS (network attached storage) solution

this could be best if all its gonna be used is in the house hold.

Basically its a drive that attaches to your internet router, and shares it over the network, and decent ones have drive redundancy on them known as RAID, basically if 1 drive should break its backed up onto another drive inside the system.

in terms of how much files will fit, on average dj mixes are about 100mb, so you'd get get alot onto a 500gb drive,

in terms of music, decent quality is usually 320kbps, = 15-20mb per file, i've got a 250gb hdd in my macbook pro, and have about 4000 files at that resolution with 50gb free.

in terms of if you go for a usb based hard drive,

if you've no free usb ports you may need a splitter, be careful though, if the drives taking it's power out of the usb port, this could be an issue, as there might not be enough power via a splitter, in an ideal world plug the drive directly into the usb port and use the virtual dj adapter via the splitter.

whats a nas?

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/reviews/nas/2003/05/07/network-attached-storage-10004049/

http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/reviews/advice/network-attached-storage.htm

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On the subject of USB ports... remember on a desktop PC that the front USB ports don't have as much power as the normal (difficult-to-reach) ones at the back of the tower - so avoid using the front ports if possible as many external devices don't like them... iPods for example sometimes won't get recognized or else perform strangely.

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Thankyou everybody so far, I have found this all incredibly informative actually. And not only that, I actually understand what's being said to me now too. I'm feeling armed enough to buy something now.

I'm really glad I asked here first.

At the moment I've only got a 250gb external hard drive which is almost full so need to get another one. Its always a good idea to have your favourite tunes, mixes photos etc, backed up on discs, however it can be very time consuming putting stuff onto discs and you have to do it regularly otherwise its a nightmare.

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