lacie

+1

best external hard drive is a custom one. get an empty external enclosure and add your own drive.

i only use oyen digital. i have both of these:

oyendigital.com
oyendigital.com

If you don't mind spending more, get a Glyph. Their 3-2-1 warranty is pretty top notch...

www.bhphotovideo.com

Gotta go with lacie

This ^^

I would just head over to www.newegg.com and look for an enclosure then toss a 1tb drive in it. These drive's are fast as hell: www.newegg.com

I still can't believe what people spend on some of those "pre-built" enclosures. Especially considering half the time you open it up and its loaded with some low performance and or no name drive with a wopping 8mb of cache...

Lacie is over-priced, over-hyped CRAP.

They're the Monster Cable of drive-enclosure makers.

Oyen and Glyph are also expensive, but at least those guys are making quality products.

^^ true Lacie are priced higher. But their track record with me has been great.
Used LaCie since 2005 with serato. 250gb up to 2tb external hd.

But I am always willing to try new stuff

i got the OWC on the go pro, 1tb wd scorpio blue. its pretty nice and i like the packaging: eshop.macsales.com

however the link posted above oyendigital.com - that case looks really nice too, i almost like it better than what i just got, havent seen it in person but... either way having a 2.5in drive/bus powered is convenien. i use to run a 3.5in enclosure but it was annoying running power to it.

Ive used lacie for years with no issues at all but you can also go the do your own route. since my lacie has been dropped and kicked and bounced and still keeps on ticking so for mobile its a no brainer.

I think I'm gonna try a 2TB Lacie Rugged off techbargains.com. If I have no problems, it will be $160 well spent.

+1

Im gonna try lacie next, ive had two seagate expansions and they failed pretty fast with no drops or nothing. I might try the roll your own way too, for some reason i didnt wanna do it with a bus powered drive, but i might try it.

still think you're better off just getting an enclosure and a harddrive separately - you have more control over the quality of the parts...

+1 but no one seems to be listening....

^^ guys you gotta understand some of us might not be "tech" saavy.

Maybe it's a comfort zone. You guys " know" the full spec of an HD, I just need to know how much space I can have LOL.

I am definitely not ignoring the suggestions :)

Always buy two of whatever drive and enclosure you decide on. Back up on a regular basis.

I actually buy 3. One stays at home and 2 for gigs, main and backup

Overkill? Naaah.

I have two lacie ruggeds and one g drive extenral witch a g drive uses a hitachi hard drive and i love both. the g drive is a tank and the lacies have been great for mobile. take a beating and no issues.

If you plan to do video make sure its up to speed, 7200 rpms or better.

Pro tools certified, made for audio and video, aluminum case, OWC for the win.
eshop.macsales.com
The apple tech at my friends school hipped me to them. Had to get one after my Lacie drive stopped mounting and then completely failed. Atrak stopped using the Lacie rugged after two of them failed on him.

The only other drive I would get is the glyph. Everything about it is top choice, enclosure, power plug, etc. www.zzounds.com Two of my friends have em now. They mainly play serato video.

I have a glyph in my studio. love it. its a beast for sure.

Can you or anyone vouch for the premade Oyen Digtal External Drives, such as the U32 Shadow or the MiniPro? Are they High quailty as well?

Thanks

a-trak's port had a short which was frying the drives.

personally, it worked okay in the beginning for me, but when it disconnected for no reason (not sleep, disconnected!) i'm over lacie rugged.

trying seagate goflex now.

i got a go glex 500gb, only thing i dont like is that the mini usb moves more than i like - most my segate drives are solid for 2-3yrs, i like to replace them after that

the premade ones are the dope. they cost more then you buying an empty one and you're own drive. i have the minipro fw800/usb 3.0. it's small, bus powered, come with cables, power supply and usb y-cable. powersupply and y-cable is only required if you have weak usb ports or no FW.

all oyen digital hardware are high quality. they use the best USB and FW chipsets and have the most desirable interfaces.

you don't have to be tech savvy to google reviews of harddrive brands and go with the consensus top brands.

+1 on the oyen digital - that's the enclosure I use with a 500 gig seagate 7200 rpm drive...

$60-$100 for an enclosure? Holy shit. But that was one of my worries, that a cheap enclosure would be the downfall of my custom external Hd. There were too many conflicting reviews on newegg when I checked about 9 months ago. I might just buy a premade one from oyen digital.

I have a question, is it possible to have a drive powered by a firewire 400 port? (the smaller 4pin one that typically comes on a pc, not the bigger 6pin ports like on a mac.) I have a 6pin to 4pin that I used to use to plugin my external hd that was powered by a power adapter. Now I just use bus powered, mostly in case of power problems.

yea, a 4 pin firewire port has no problem powering a drive

I have a Lacie D2 Quatra. I agree that they are pricey, but the thing is built like a tank. Also has plenty of connection options.

The worst HD I've used with Serato? Western Digital My Book.

All the smaller 4-pin Firewire ports I've seen on non-Mac laptops have had no bus power at all. Curious where you've seen any different. Or were you just referring to data speed?

you're right - I'm thinking 6-pin

yea, you won't be able to power a firewire drive with a 4pin - read that wrong.

Some enclosures though will include a USB powering cable which will allow you to power the drive with a usb port...

Thats cool that would probably put less stress on the system when you have a mbox, serato box, midi keyboard, and HD all plugged in. But damn you got my hopes up haha. Any suggestions for enclosure brands? Im not trying to spend that much on a oyen digital enclosure, but I might consider their premade HDs

Hey guys I have only have one external hard drive (I know bad move) a Seagate. Luckily it has worked for a few years now. I need to buy a new one. this thread is old so I want to see what you guys think now. What do you all suggest to get now? Willing to spend 100-120.

what is the difference between lacie thunderbolt and lacie firewire - which 1 is better?

Avoid LaCie like the plague. They're absolute garbage (overpriced garbage, at that).

Best external enclosures are from Oyen Digital and Other World Computing (their metal ones). Put your choice of hard drive on one of those (I personally prefer Western Digital and avoid Seagate) and you're set.

My Seagate has worked for two years now. Why is Seagate so bad? These other hardrives you suggested, what are the price ranges

They're not... I think all the HD manufacturers have had a bad batch or run of drives at one time or another.

So you are saying that it is OK just to get another seagate

Ive had amazing results with g-drives and lacie so i think its all luck lol lol. I really do.

Thanks for responding. I think I will just stick with seagate

Seagate has had more issues in recent years than all other drive manufacturers combined.

If one were to be limiting themselves to what's found at places like Best Buy and the Apple store, I'd go with G Tech. Decent metal enclosures and Hitachi drives inside.

I think I want to get a thunderbolt ssd drive at some point... hopefully they will make one with decent capacity in the next few years that doesn't cost an arm and a leg

Guys are thanks for your input but it seems to me its just taking a chance when it comes to external drives. I will stick to Seagate it has lasted for two years and still working great. You guys are very knowledgeable.

Thunderbolt 2 is coming from itel next year. double the current thunderbolt speed. How sweet

that +ssd tech coming along and in next 5 years there def will be great advances

G-Technology G-Drive MINI.

It's 2.5" 1TB, USB 3.0 (bus powered; no power cord needed) *AND* 7200RPM..


I can't think of any other drives out there that are 2.5" , bus powered and 7200rpm.

And G-Tech is known for their reliability/solidness.

Anyone use this one yet?

www.amazon.com

^5400rpm.. no thunderbolt and no USB 3

I think at this point in hard drive technology, the only advantage with 7200rpm is excess heat and vibration.

this

ya i dont want a thunderbolt of usb 3 drive i need a firewire 800 port, i have enough midi shit clocking my usb ports as is

the new gen 7200rpm 2.5" are quiet and cool. and more importantly a lot faster than the older gen 7200rpm drives

i personally dont see the point in "speed", im just using it to play videos, and my current external is a 5400 and the load times not noticable

newegg has a seagate 1.5TB for $70 I believe. I'm kinda weary of large hard drives though. Would hate for it to crash with 1TB worth of data on it. I would rather kop 2 500TB's.

OOps... meant 500 GB's

someones obviously not playing high quality/hd videos lol..

Everything from smashvids/ vj-pro....havent switched to bluray yet lol

I've played large uncompressed MOV files with a 5400rpm drive and they played just fine.

I've also DJ-ed with high-quality MP4 files on a 5400rpm drive and they worked just fine as well.

7200rpm in a DJ-ing situation might get you a few milliseconds' faster loading time, might shave a few seconds off load time when launching Scratch Live with a large library. Otherwise modern large 5400rpm drives are way more than fast enough for DJ use (with or without video).

For booting the OS and running apps, a SSD is definitely the way to go if you want maximum speed. That will make a much bigger overall performance difference than just using a 7200rpm drive for media.

This

My Lacie D2 Quatra failed me last night during a gig.

word?

Thats terrible dogg. I'm taking a chance with glyph's gpt hard drive. Only thing I dont like is it's not USB powered.

Yes it sucked 300 ppl was in the club. I ran diskwarrior on it when I got home and it found a problem with the drive. diskwarrior repaired it but after reformatting the HD still seems to be not running well. My bro told me its cause I use the drive a lot, and the constant moving around would cause the Hd to fail. I think my best bet is to go with the rugged, because it looks like it can take the abuse of a mobil dj, but some say its a wrong choice, cause the rugged are not meant to run for long hours. "cause it over heats" Im kinda stuck on what I should get. Frustrating!

As I've said a few thousand times before, LaCie's enclosures are crap. I would NEVER use one of them for any data I cared about.

Badly-designed electronics (slowest SATA-to-Firewire 800 bridge I've ever seen, that on a "rugged" drive), power-supplies with a huge failure rate, enclosures secured with adhesive tape and no provision for ventilation or heatsinking.

Just because it's in places like the Apple Store and Best Buy doesn't mean it's any good.

Plus now LaCie is owned by Seagate, the drive manufacturer with by far the highest failure rate. Crap+crap=morecrap.

If you MUST buy at retail, the "G-tech" enclosures are a much better design (containing Hitachi drives, which are also good). You can buy pretty much the same OEM enclosures and bare drives as separates at a good computer store and save some $ though.

Oyen Digital is probably the best source for bus-powerable enclosures with good electronics, good durability and proper heatsinking.

Does that go for the smaller g-techs as well Mark? Had good experience with the larger ones, but have a smaller one thats starting to act up. And actually none of of my 4 ruggeds have ever totally failed: one the fw800 crapped out (fw400 and usb 2.0 still working) and one the usb port "sunk" into the enclosure while connecting (fw800/400 still working. Also have experienced corruption on 2 individual drives, but expect that to be caused by a PC connection (free-file-sync). I did give those drives a real hard time, and they have lasted for a long period, so was kinda prepared issues down the line, as few things seem to last forever.

So, whats my best bet for a thunderbolt bus powered external these days? Looking for something to do work on the go connected to the retina: video editing, resolume triple head vjing, general graphics work, etc. Ie something fast, preferably not breaking the bank.

Also, would an usb3.0 hd put strain on the retina usb bus, interupting the Rane hardware and/or midi controllers?

Thanks, Warp

+1 every time, all the time, not to mention higher quality drives

So, would the thunderbolt to FW800 adaptor drive a bus powered Oyen Digital from a retina?
Not about to find out the expensive way.... Any first hand advise appreciated.

I see they have thunderbolt SSD options coming out, only 240Gb in the first batch though....

oyendigital.com

i'm waiting for the enclosure only version and i'm in.

on a side note i have used the apple tb to fw adapter. in my experience it works with the hard drives i have thrown at. but the majority of users i have talked to said it does not provide bus power to their drives and they have to use their drives power supply.

i have also used the belkin tb express dock. it works fine for everything, but it itself is powered with a power supply.

Yup, that´s what others been telling me too, that the tb>fw adaptor is bad for most bus powered external hardware. Heard this mostly from photographers, not DJs btw....

Retina machine arrives later this week, so will do some testing with my "old" lacie rugged ones, and a G-Tech mini.

So Nyce, any experience in running usb3.0 drives along Rane interfaces? Good, Bad, Ugly?

You guys keep saying this but do understand that there is some folks on here that have no clue what to buy, or how to get this done. Can some one please recommend what to get when I walk into the computer store. Im looking for a 1tb drive thats powered by a power cord. I dont care to much for bus powered drives.

Looking for the same advice, altough buspowered for me. Don't mind it have the option of mains power, but want to travel as light as possible.

Then you should get a 1tb drive thats powered by a power cord.

Thanks that was helpful.

M.Bezzle to the rescue as always ;)
In other "news", just picked up the new mbp, now for that transfer of music process from the old one.

What about the ioSafe Rugged Portable? check it out on youtube. Seems it will be able to take the abuse of a dj.

Come on, man. Do ten minutes of reading to improve the quality of your gear.



I'm under the impression that none of the "prepackaged" external hard drives have quality drives inside of them (low cache size, low speed, etc). Pick an enclosure based on the interface (USB, FW, e-SATA) and construction (aluminum, fans, bus/external power), then pick a drive based off it's specs and reviews. Assembly is pretty straightforward (open, insert drive, add screws, done). Follow instructions on Apple website to format to HFS.

Then whats the point of this Forum/discussion?

eshop.macsales.com

oyendigital.com

there you go. but if your looking to save money and possibly get better quality drive your better off just buying the enclosure and installing the hard drive yourself.

all you need is a screw driver to install the drive and youtube to learn how to format a drive for either OSX or Windows.

...to provide a collection of info for you to read thru and improve the quality of ur gear.

Is Toshiba a good drive to put into the enclosure?

Seems like it's about spoon-feeding lately...

here is an idea. STOP REPLYING TO THE POST THEN!

Thats been tried, what happens then is the lazy poster spends a ton of energy demanding to be fad, its very obnoxiois and not nearly as entertaining as making fun of then

Here is an idea SPELL CHECK!

Western Digital or Hitachi (HGST) to me would be better choices. Toshiba isn't terrible in terms of reliability or performance, same with Samsung. Seagate I avoid.

In general the "prepackaged" "external hard drives" you find for sale at retail are both inferior and more expensive than buying a high quality enclosure and putting in a bare drive yourself.

If you're going to be using the external drive as a primary drive, running it regularly at DJ gigs, it will pay to be picky about a good enclosure with proper heat-dissipation and excellent internal electronics (SATA-to-FW/USB/Thunderbolt bridges).

A little less critical if the purpose of the drive is maybe as a secondary or offsite backup...though even then I'd avoid Lacie's crap enclosures and Seagate's crap drives.

i have used a usb 3.0 hard drive with a mac and pc, but not for audio or video. the one i use the most is a workhorse for vmware, logic pro, pro tools and premiere pro, so i don't see why serato would have any problem.

the external drive i do use with serato is an oyen digital fw800 with (2) 1tb samsung spinpoint m8's in raid 0.

i'm on the hunt for a single tb enclosure but i can't find any. i know some people have opened up the buffalo and the seagate, but they don't work with every ssd.

Was thinking of possible usb conflicts/audio droputs as reported with usb 1.1 and usb 2.0 on older systems?

I guess thats what id prefer aswell. I wanna keep music on my internal, and keep my visuals (highres movies for resolume, not sv/me) on an external thunderbolt bus powered SSD.

I only use USB 3.0 drives as backups, have not tested them with USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 SL devices in use at the same time. Have little reason to, since I don't use external drives when DJ-ing and my primary backup is a second laptop (same two internal drives as my main).

If I was relying on an external drive, I'd probably still prefer FW800 for all the reasons I've preferred FW800 in the past. Much more bus-power current available, and uses its own processor for i/o instead of hitting the main CPU. And plenty fast enough for video DJ-ing even with 1080p videos.

Anybody else use these? instagram.com

Well yeah Mark, I should probably explain further what I want to do with the external. Highres in my instance is 2048x768 and higher, and id love to have about 5 of them playing at once, layered in resolume. I dont see how a conventional hd running fw800 would deliver that?

Dont really know that much about thunderbolt technology yet, as Ive mostly used firewire in the past. However, firewire is a fairly old technology by now, although tried and tested, will eventually be abandoned. As ssd's are eventually dropping, Id like to take the advantage of them in my work. I spend way to much time waiting for disk transfers and renders, so wanna cut time, everywhere I can.

When vjing, I rarely see cpu hitting that high, but disk speed definetively is a bottleneck, for what i do. Then again, I might be wrong about the exact bottleneck. Will do some more testing on the retina next week.

Mark & Nyce, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Thanks for the great reply but im confused when you say that Western Digital would be a better choice. Why not just buy a Western Digital external drive instead of buying a enclosure and a drive? They are not that expensive, and would you say Western Digital is better than lacie?

Had good experiences with actual wd hd's, but a few troublesome wd enclosures in the past. Id say my experince wth lacie enclosures over the last 10+ years have been better than wd enclosures. But the actual wd hard drives themselves have usually been good.

Then there's this...
www.ebay.com

And this!
www.ebay.com

Your welcome guys!

There is a big difference in quality between Western Digital's drives (good) and their enclosures (not so good).

Also some of the WD "external drives" have for some reason included lower-performance variants of their bare drives. Lower cache has been one common feature.

That said: I have do two of the current-model USB 3.0 WD 2tb bus-powered "My Book" drives. They were at Costco for much less than the bare WD 2tb 2.5-inch drives sell for. They seem fine as secondary/tertiary/offsite backups (in other words, very light-duty occasional use). I would *not* put them into any kind of "primary" service. The all-plastic cases seem like a problem for heat-dissipation from the drive inside.

No probably not. Ideal for your scenario would probably be a current-model non-retina MacBook Pro with the second SSD inside (optical-bay adapter) so it would take advantage of the full SATA-3 speed. I'd personally recommend the Samsung 840 Pro series for that. High "incompressible" read/write performance, very low power-consumption, very low heat, seemingly very solid firmware. Have the 512mb model in both my main and backup laptops.

I was (earlier) speaking of more garden-variety video-DJ use, for which a conventional 5400rpm drive connected viw FW800 is plenty fast enough.

You're probably right Mark, thing is, I just now got brand new retina (768GB SSD). I was using the late 2011 17" i7 mbp for some resolume visuals, but wanna leave it at home, as I also use it daily for production work.

Reason for getting the retina, its mainly a replacement for my older pre unibody penryn 15", and its main use will still be audio only djing. Wanted a fast 15" with less bulk, so I guess that's why chose it over the regular mbp. When doing visuals only, Id like to bring the new retina, and keep the 17" at home.

Also just to make sure, that late 2011 17" model would not like the samsung 840 at sata-3 speed in the optibay right?

So I guess my plan is to either:
A) slim down the audio archive to about 400 GB, leave about 200GB for my visuals, or
B) go with some sort of SSD external, once I can get a thunderbolt enclosure for a decent price.

Most likely not.

There's apparently been some exceptions, and some involved workarounds involving large amounts of foil shielding and/or cable replacements. Nothing I'd want to depend on for "work" purposes though.

The ongoing lack of Thunderbolt enclosures is disappointing, though I remember it also taking awhile to see Firewire enclosures when that first appeared. And some of the early examples really sucked.

Disappointing indeed, I guess even though they're called macbook pro, most of the clients are regular home users far from "pro needs". So I imagine the demand for Thunderbolt haven't hit big yet, and with the rise of usb 3.0, might never will...

So, I'm not really that knowledgeable about usb 3.0 enclosures either, any estimate of real world read/write speeds typical for a bus powered usb3.0 SSD ? Or where I could find more info on the matter? Trying to educate myself further on current storage tech. Maybe I need to get on some photography/videography/filmaking/visual digital artists forums next....

Any tips greatly appreciated, and Mark, thank you so much for your knowledge so far!
Keep it coming :)

ok make sense.... I went to Micro center today to see what they have for enclosures, and drives. The guy I talked to swore that no matter what kind of hard drive I bought or built that it would last only 2/3 years, because of how I use it. I need a new drive by friday and still pretty much confused what to get. Right now iosafe rugged portable is what im looking at till I have the time to build a drive. I did learn a lot tho in the few days thank guys!

Watchwww.youtube.com

@kurve yo we need something portable. those wd drives are the size of a few light bricks.

@djkurve, why the bids so low for those huge thunderblt drives, that cant be right

I use western digital

I went with a Glyph gpt 150 or something like that. I've only had it for a few months now so I can't say anything about longevity. It is powered by a cord. It's cool (so far)

I took my chances on the iosafe rugged portable. Bought it yesterday, cause I needed one for friday, but also trying to educated myself as much as I can before building a HD.

I like my bricks. :)

That's what I thought when I won the 4TB drive from a previous auction. However they are legit. I inspected the drives/enclosure and even verified the serial # with WD. Guess you still can find a good deal on eBay every once in awhile. ;)

Not sure there is an absolute best Hard Drive. I've been researching the field and all Drives have issues. There is however a trick you can try to save a drive with files on it that seems inaccessible. I certify that this works, no matter how strange it sounds.



I have a LaCie Rikiki 1Tb drive on which my entire 3000+ record collection of vinyl from the past 50 years is stored. Then it stopped working. I was heartbroken and livid at the same time, and expected to have to record the whole collection again. However, during my research I noticed a post by a man who said he'd recovered HDD's from Computers and External Drives and even his daughter's iPod by putting them in the Freezer for 30 to 45 minutes, then connecting them to the computer again, waiting 10 minutes or so before accessing it.

Suddenly all my files were back just the way I'd transferred them with all the notes I'd made about sources, dates and musicians. I have since transferred them to the largest Stick/Thumb/Key drives I can find. Anything so long as it doesn't involve moving parts. The Rikiki has been in the freezer several times when it pretends it doesn't have any files on it. Each time it reveals all the files after it's cooling off. I don't know why this works, all I know is it does.

I suspect that the best idea may be to get internal HDD's since they function well in a warm environment and can't be tossed or resurrected because of the hardware they're attached to, and buy a case for the drive and connect it that way. A Y cable which connects 2 USB 2 ports at the same time to the External Drive may also help, since one of the problems may be low voltage reaching unit via the USB cable powering the External Drive.

It strikes me that a USB hub with multiple Stick Drives would add flexibility and greater variety to a DJ set up though the problem of Ejecting those drives might still exist.

Rob Boyter

My 9-5 is building and repairing commercial systems. My 5-9 is mobile gigging. After doing both for years here's what I have found:
External hard drives during live shows is a dangerous practice. Western Digital hard drives, internal or external, are the most solid and dependable. SSD'd are more expensive but more dependable and load to RAM quicker. Which translates to they're less likely to allow your system to crash while you're burning through tracks quickly doing tricks on a live set.

Happy hunting!

Whatever drive you buy.....................its going to die.

They all die. Every single one WILL die at some point.

Learning to treat the drives as disposable pieces of metal and learning the data is whats important will leave you in a better position than trying to figure out which drive works best and doesn't fail as often.

I seriously buy the cheapest drives I can find, and make sure my backups are good, and that I have extra drives with me at all times.

get this.
Watchwww.youtube.com

hello..it is now 2015.....I wonder if folks will bring up SSD drives now.
Especially since some of us VDJ as well.

I have this one -> www.amazon.com For visuals only, a little small. Also looking for a buspowered thunderbolt enclosure for my Samsung 840 1TB -> www.bhphotovideo.com
The hard drive discussion carried on in this thread -> serato.com

The Lacie is pretty fast but it wouldn't work me being it's only 256G and I don't think you can daisy chain with that configuration. I have a late 2011 MBP so mine still has a firewire port and lacies can be daisy chained via firewire...

Yep, that's why I'm looking into finding an eclosure for my 1TB Samsung SSD.
Using the blackmagic disk speed test, my LaCie has about 290mbs write speed,
375mbs read on thunderbolt. Speed is comparable using usb3.0 with it aswell.

No daisy on it sadly, but my mbp retina has 2 Thunderbolt ports, also a separate hdmi, so normally I can manage, even if running separate projectors, the drive, SL card, and midicontroller(s).

I used to be a big advokate of Firewire. These days though, I'm pretty much over it. There is just no way It can match the match the speed of usb3.0/thunderbolt. None of my current machines longer have FW ports, and the TB > FW adaptor has been unstable for me at times.

Speaking of ports, did you see the new macbook? No extra ports! Charging and data transfer on the same port!

In what world is that a good thing

Obviously the new 12" MacBook is designed for non-performance-intensive use, and if you can't use the USB port without removing the power source, that would mean running it from battery while DJ-ing.

Apple should have named it Macbook Mini-Air lol

OR iPad Pro.

Yeah the new macbook is a non-touch tablet, on osx.
Not fit for creative music/video use. Low powered, no "real" graphics card.
The screen is 2304 x 1440, but won't do a 1920x1200 res, tops out at 1440 x 900

But hey, it has a nice screen, comes in gold and will set you back 1600 usd, LOL.
The mbp machines have gone up in price too, oh well...

Apple logic.

I confidently predict they'll have no trouble selling them...for a lot of people (maybe most people), that's all the computer they need, and the design/colors will attract a lot of buyers.

I think the MBP prices increasing was just outside the US, due to the US $ increasing in value relative to other currency. Prices look the same to me on the US Apple Store site.

Mark just answered this, and I have to (sadly) agree.
Those machines are made for consumers, not pro's, enthusiasts and geeks like ourselves:

Probably right, my local currency is very dependent on the oil price,
so we took a bigger hit lately.
For comparison, the top mbp 15" is starting at 2500 usd in the US apple store,
while it is about 2965 usd in the norwegian apple store.

We all use macbook pro's anyway and those has plenty of ports in the newest update so no worries.

Take apart a Lacie hard drive and you will most likely find a Toshiba Hard Drive inside as I Did. Lacie does not make their own Hard Drives but charges alot more for the enclosure! Just sayin!

Samsung SSD is the best bang for the buck in my opinion! Just ordered the new Samsung T1 in 250 GB will post later on quality.

has anyone tried the externals from OWC?

Okay report on the new Samsung T1 SSD Drive. 89 GB of zipped Karaoke transferred to a Toshiba 5400 RPM 2TB hard drive 46 minutes, transfer to the new Samsung T1 250 GB SSD drive just under 6 minutes.

I use a couple of the older clear ones eshop.macsales.com plus also using the Aluminum Mercury Elite Pro Mini - eshop.macsales.com - I've rolled my own drives in all - 1TB, 1TB and a 500Gb

I been using one of the old clears as my Video Drive since I started dabbling in video - works well - reliable - no issues.

Thanks... Their products seem good... I think I will go with them

ANyone else afraid of using an SSD an external. Ive been reading reports of SSD drives that weren't plugged in for a year or two being completely empty when they power it up.

This is one example, but there are many articles ive been seeing about this topic lately.

www.zdnet.com

I tend to use my externals for a while, then buy a slightly bigger one, and dedicate the old one to backups and stuff. I have many drives I haven't plugged in in over a year.

This scares me, I need more info.

I have not heard/read that. I'm like you , I have old drives for backup. But they are constantly in use. Whenever I download music on my main external drive, I ALWAYS back it up to my backup drive. I have 2 LaCie 1TB drives. When one is updated with music, I always sync it with the other LaCie

I use SSD's mainly as performance drives, and regular spinning HD's mainly for backups. Thats basically what they are meant for, and what makes most sense IMO. Actually I do have a my working SDJ lib backed up on an SSD as well, just for the speed, but thats a redundancy drive...

There is no 'best' external drive. Lacies and other brands suck.

Invest in a NICE external case (lian-li) or even a $20 case like Vantex Nexstar. They've never failed me.

Invest in the NICEST HDD you want to use. I personally use 1-4TB WD Blacks.. I don't anymore though since Serato runs a lot better off the laptop hdd. Get 64-128MB cache on the drive and make sure its a sata 3, 3.5" that runs off its own power (NOT USB POWERED).

This way, if the case or drive ever DO fail, you replace one or the other, under warranty usually.

External drives are expensive old drives with bad warranties. Why bother when you can get whatever drive you prefer and put it in whatever case you want?

Also, would recommend 1-2TB max drives for safety, backup-ability and general performance (newer drives generally aren't as fast as end of design cycle older parts)

As for SSDs, they are fast and nice but I wouldn't trust them for DJing (at least without one or two backup redundancies, at least one ALWAYS at any gig with me) as flash SSD storage is not meant for lots of writing and changing files... expect 5-10 years max lifespan on an SSD used regularly for DJing (I would guess)

I totally disagree with this approach for live performance.

1- I'd way rather worry about just one cable connected directly to the computer rather than another one for the power, especially if it's a wall-wart/adapter of some sort. Especially in a multiple-DJ's-in-a-night scenario.

2- 3.5-inch "desktop-type" hard drives are much less vibration/shock resistant than either 2.5-inch "laptop-type" hard drives or (of course) SSD's.

3- If you have a power interruption of some kind, unless you have a UPS in the DJ booth it's safer to use a bus-powered hard drive since in the event of a power issue the computer's battery will continue running the drive. Yes, with correct use of a modern file system (not FAT32 LOL) it's rare that a drive unexpectedly shutting off in use will destroy data, but it's still not unheard of.

I've been using SSD's for DJ-ing for about five years now, and have so far seen exactly zero issues from them.

Multiple backups/archives onto various types of media is always a good idea.

All that said, my ideal scenario was the one Apple allowed until discontinuing the non-retina 15 and 17 inch MacBook Pros: having a second drive inside the computer in the optical bay. For all the advantages the Retina MBP's have, I really miss being able to have 2TB or more self-contained in the computer itself.

Interesting - sticking with using internal laptop HDD atm but your thoughts on SSDs are interesting. I'm mainly trying to free up USB for less potential for dropouts, particularly with SL3/SL4 running 3-4x 24bit 96khz long length wave files...

I kind of like to give all my USB power/bandwidth to Serato alone, but maybe an SSD would be decent for an external, compared to my recommendations.

At least this should be putting nails in the Lacie coffin I hope.

How long are you expecting to hold onto your hard drives? Getting 5-10 years out of a drive is phenomenal whether it's a regular drive or SSD. I believe that Samsung offers a 10 year warranty on its Pro SSD drives. That's better than any warranty you will find from WD, Seagate, etc.

It's not the AC power (or lack there of) that you have to worry about - it's the USB bus in general that is the bottleneck. Use Friewire or Thunderbolt - less traffic?

Think of the USB bus as a 2 lane highway - you have Serato device, trackpad, clicker, etc all running off the USB bus = lot of traffic on the highway no matter if you are a 18 wheel Mack truck (3.5 Powered Drive). a Ford Focus (standard Bus powered 2.5) or a Prius Hybrid (SSD 2.5) - all are still traffic on the highway.

Think of the firewire port as an express lane - one car no traffic

Are there a lot of artists releasing product in 24bit 96khz?

Companies like RME have audio interfaces that provide 30 channels in and 30 channels out of 24bit 96khz audio simultaneously over USB 2.0 so I think you will be fine doing 3-4 tracks. I've tested my Allen & Heath mixer's 18 channels 24bit 48khz of simultaneous recording to a USB 2.0 western digital external and it handled it no problem.

I would recommend the LaCie Rugged Mini 4 TB External Hard Drive. Here's a good review video of the product: youtu.be

You can PURCHASE IT HERE: www.amazon.com

Using Silicone Data A60 ..for djing with my toshiba laptop goes well and is way rugged

"Are there a lot of artists releasing product in 24bit 96khz?"

Most recordings are released on something like 24/96 or higher. Its not something I'd worry about though. DJ equipment isn't meant for critical listening, and just doesn't have the resolution to bring out the additional detail of high res recordings. If high res is available, by all means get it. Other than file size, there's no downside. As long as your files are CD, or lossless equivalent, you should be fine. The resolution's high enough that you don't hear the effects of bit stripping like you can with MP-3. (I can, at least. I know not everyone hears a quality difference with lossy formats.)

Just for reference, I have done quite a bit of listening, and compared file types of all qualities on actual DJ equipment. I used my Pioneer SX2.

I was in Staples a couple of weeks ago and noticed they now sell LaCie. I didn't check how good the prices were, just that it may be an option.