DJing Discussion

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Stay Away From this Hard Drive Enclosure

DJ Silk 8:34 PM - 20 September, 2006
It's called Mad Dog Multimedia.
I picked mine up from Compusa earlier in the year.

The bottom line is that the firewire connections on it aren't any good. It will cause your laptop to freeze up, serato to quit unexpectatly, or plan crash.

I did some research on this before I posted this and other people have had the same issue.

So...just be carefull.
DJ_Mike_Coquilla 9:11 PM - 20 September, 2006
hehe, sorry Silk... just giggling to myself when i read your thread title "Stay Away from..."

it reminded me of those adds in Craigslist (in the Adult Erotic Services) where people post "Stay Away from so and so... she's a cop or has VD or is rip off" :)

sorry for sidetracking... thanks for the heads up.

u should try AMS's Venus DS3 (dual interface USB2.0 & FW)...and it has a large @ss quiet fan in tha bottom too. i've got 3 of em (supports up to 500Gb drives)

www.extremeoverclocking.com

www.amselectronics.com
Julls 10:18 PM - 20 September, 2006
Yo Mike, so I can "raid like 4 hard drives together to make one? I'm confused.
DJ_Mike_Coquilla 11:29 PM - 20 September, 2006
from my understanding, the drives must be equivalent in size and type.

otherwise, the smallest drive will determine the raid size...(kinda like the lowest common denominator)

*look at me...as if i know what i'm talking about :) *

i'm a nerd, but not a geek (geeks know what their doing...nerds think they know what their doing :)
Julls 12:21 AM - 21 September, 2006
So if I get two WD 500 GB hard drives, and raid them together my computer will read them as a 1 TB Hard drive?
DJMark 12:30 AM - 21 September, 2006
I'd expand this to "Stay away from CompUSA whenever possible". Give your business to a local retailer (in San Francisco, Central Computer and many others to choose from).

CompUSA engages in blatantly deceptive and fraudulent sales/rebate practices, and sells a lot of questionable off-brand junk such as the item posted about above. I'll only buy something from them if there's a particular item I need immediately that's there and nowhere else (rarely).

My most recent CompUSA experience: salesperson insisting (actually getting argumentative) that Apple no longer sells the AC adaptors for the Powerbooks (wanted to sell me some off-brand ugly thing that was $30 more expensive). One block away, the Apple Store had about 50 of the Powerbook AC adaptors sitting on the shelves.

Most Disgusting High-Pressure Sales Tactics Ever: A few days after 9-11-01 I was helping a friend buy a new iMac at CompUSA (this was before the Apple Store existed), and the salesperson was giving us a *very* hard time trying to sell an "extended warranty". His final bizarre attempt to convince us: "no one would have ever thought the World Trade Center would collapse, you never know".

Google something like "CompUSA rebate fraud" before you buy anything from them where a rebate is involved.

The enclosure that DJ_Mike_Coquilla is definitely worth getting, I also have several of them. Try Newegg.com if you don't have a good place to get them locally.
DJ 3pm 3:03 AM - 21 September, 2006
Quote:
So if I get two WD 500 GB hard drives, and raid them together my computer will read them as a 1 TB Hard drive?

depends on what kind of raid you setup.

raid 0 (striped) is built for performance, your comp will see it as a big 1tb drive but will be able to read/write faster since it is actually 2 sets of platters moving instead of 1. mike is right, the drives need to be the same size or they will use the lowest common size. an alternative is called 'jbod' (just a bunch of disks) that does nearly the same thing as raid 0 but drives can be different sizes with no consequence (5gb + 10gb+ 60gb = 75gb_

raid 1 (mirrored) is built for dependability, your comp writes to both drives identically so you always have an exact backup incase of drive failure.

raid 5 is sort of the best of both worlds, it writes over several drives redundantly. if one of the drives in the raid goes out, the other drives can rebuild the lost information from the small bits that were redundantly overwritten on them. i set one of these up once in an apple xserve, it was pretty cool. 4 x 250gb drives ended up creating ~700gb in this mode. if anyone of the 4 drives went out, just pull it and replace it with a like drive and the other drives will re-populate the information from the drive that crashed.
DJ Unique 3:33 AM - 21 September, 2006
I also have 2 of the AMS's Venus DS3 (dual interface USB2.0 & FW). They have worked well for me. One of the power adapters failed, however AMS replaced it for me.
DJ BIS 3:51 AM - 21 September, 2006
Newegg.com FTW biatches! :)

Silk, sorry to hear about this. Just got my SSl and the laptop is handling it very well. yep, it took me this long bro. lol

See around soon.
DJ_Mike_Coquilla 8:37 AM - 21 September, 2006
yo Mark, u just reminded me... i never got my rebate back from Hitachi ($40)... i bet my wifey thought it was junk mail or sum credit card app. and threw it away :( i'm alway asking her, but she just shruggs her shoulders.

yo 3pm,
raid 1 (mirrored) is built for dependability, your comp writes to both drives identically so you always have an exact backup incase of drive failure.

so do u think they make lappys that have this capability? that'd be dope.
DJ BIS 9:11 AM - 21 September, 2006
Yep, alienware has been doing Raid for a little bit. I think they are up to 160GB per drive right now. (2 160GB internals with Raid configuration)

Your choice of a total of 280GB total or a redundant 160 GB drive. And they are 7200 RPM drives.

You are going to pay over $2800 for this setup, but its nice.
;)
DJ_Mike_Coquilla 9:41 AM - 21 September, 2006
drool.
DJ BIS 10:16 AM - 21 September, 2006
Even then I would still need an external drive... :( Bleh.
DJ Silk 4:52 PM - 21 September, 2006
Hey Mike....Thanks for the heads up. :-)
I'm going to check that out.
DJ_Mike_Coquilla 4:59 PM - 21 September, 2006
if you're near a Fry's Electronics, it cost me around 60 or 70 dollars... i'll confirm when i find my receipts.
DJ Silk 5:51 PM - 21 September, 2006
No...I'm not near a Fry's. I'll have to order it online.
Good looking out Mike!
s42000 5:56 PM - 21 September, 2006
Quote:
Quote:
So if I get two WD 500 GB hard drives, and raid them together my computer will read them as a 1 TB Hard drive?

depends on what kind of raid you setup.

raid 0 (striped) is built for performance, your comp will see it as a big 1tb drive but will be able to read/write faster since it is actually 2 sets of platters moving instead of 1. mike is right, the drives need to be the same size or they will use the lowest common size. an alternative is called 'jbod' (just a bunch of disks) that does nearly the same thing as raid 0 but drives can be different sizes with no consequence (5gb + 10gb+ 60gb = 75gb_

raid 1 (mirrored) is built for dependability, your comp writes to both drives identically so you always have an exact backup incase of drive failure.

raid 5 is sort of the best of both worlds, it writes over several drives redundantly. if one of the drives in the raid goes out, the other drives can rebuild the lost information from the small bits that were redundantly overwritten on them. i set one of these up once in an apple xserve, it was pretty cool. 4 x 250gb drives ended up creating ~700gb in this mode. if anyone of the 4 drives went out, just pull it and replace it with a like drive and the other drives will re-populate the information from the drive that crashed.


It you are looking for redunduncy, stay away from RAID 0 (No mirroring or parity), it really is not true RAID. Failure on one drive will cause all data on the array to be lost !
Julls 9:02 PM - 21 September, 2006
3pm thanks for explaining that. I'm just trying to put together a BIG ASS drive that I can carry everything on.
DJ_Mike_Coquilla 7:47 AM - 22 September, 2006
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
So if I get two WD 500 GB hard drives, and raid them together my computer will read them as a 1 TB Hard drive?

depends on what kind of raid you setup.

raid 0 (striped) is built for performance, your comp will see it as a big 1tb drive but will be able to read/write faster since it is actually 2 sets of platters moving instead of 1. mike is right, the drives need to be the same size or they will use the lowest common size. an alternative is called 'jbod' (just a bunch of disks) that does nearly the same thing as raid 0 but drives can be different sizes with no consequence (5gb + 10gb+ 60gb = 75gb_

raid 1 (mirrored) is built for dependability, your comp writes to both drives identically so you always have an exact backup incase of drive failure.

raid 5 is sort of the best of both worlds, it writes over several drives redundantly. if one of the drives in the raid goes out, the other drives can rebuild the lost information from the small bits that were redundantly overwritten on them. i set one of these up once in an apple xserve, it was pretty cool. 4 x 250gb drives ended up creating ~700gb in this mode. if anyone of the 4 drives went out, just pull it and replace it with a like drive and the other drives will re-populate the information from the drive that crashed.


It you are looking for redunduncy, stay away from RAID 0 (No mirroring or parity), it really is not true RAID. Failure on one drive will cause all data on the array to be lost !


so S, would the best bet be raid 5 as 3pm mentioned, best of both worlds. it is kinda freaky how it re-populates itself... kinda like that silver cop bad guy in the Terminator
s42000 2:48 PM - 22 September, 2006
^^^ Yes .. IMO if you are doing RAID, RAID 5 is the way to go and you can do it with a minimum of 3 drives.
DJ SHY 5:16 PM - 22 September, 2006
daamn...and i just bought this enclosure like 3 days ago...lol...i guess i'll be shoppin for a new one....

Thanks!
DJ Silk 5:32 PM - 22 September, 2006
Quote:
daamn...and i just bought this enclosure like 3 days ago...lol...i guess i'll be shoppin for a new one....

Thanks!

Yeah Shy...take that thing back playa.
I'm glad I posted this information.
DJ_Mike_Coquilla 7:20 PM - 22 September, 2006
cool...raid 5... so like i know there are pci/isa raid cards for desktops, but what solutions r avail 4 lappys
Julls 9:27 PM - 22 September, 2006
Quote:
cool...raid 5... so like i know there are pci/isa raid cards for desktops, but what solutions r avail 4 lappys


For real, I would like to know too.
DJ 3pm 4:22 AM - 24 September, 2006
Quote:
cool...raid 5... so like i know there are pci/isa raid cards for desktops, but what solutions r avail 4 lappys

you're pretty much stuck using some kind of external device. while i wouldn't go so far as to call these things 'portable', you could try these buffalo terastations:

2tb (4x500gb): www.buy.com
1.6tb (4x400gb): www.buy.com
1tb (4x250gb): www.buy.com

those storage capacites don't figure raid 5 into their size, but the device can be configured that way. you might be able to froogle them for less, but expect to pay ~$1k for these things. this is actually reasonable considering what dj bis was saying about those alienware lappys for $2800.
DJ_Mike_Coquilla 7:50 AM - 24 September, 2006
cool.
DJ BIS 7:58 AM - 24 September, 2006
I can't see how anybody can run out of space with a single syandard sized 750GB disc. Thats just a whole hell of a lot of music than probably most mobile jocks will never fully intend to use. Now if you are doing video thats a whole other deal...

Check her out:

www.radioshack.com
DJ 3pm 5:10 PM - 24 September, 2006
Quote:
Stay Away From this Hard Drive Enclosure

Quote:
I can't see how anybody can run out of space with a single syandard sized 750GB disc. Thats just a whole hell of a lot of music than probably most mobile jocks will never fully intend to use. Now if you are doing video thats a whole other deal...

Check her out:

www.radioshack.com

i hate that enclosure. it has caused me literally hours worth of trouble. we have the 300gb model at the tv station i work for. that thing has a stupid power management thing built into it that can't be turned off; it spins itself down then takes a couple seconds to spin back up to speed. we use this on a final cut pro g5 editing system and it causes problems when dumping video out, spinning beachball appears for a few seconds while the drive spins up again. i imagine it would do the same thing when using it with scratch live.

that being said, you're right: 750gb should be more than enough space for anyone using mp3s.
DJ BIS 10:29 PM - 24 September, 2006
3PM, yes, that is very annoying when in use at home with normal programs, etc. But seems like with Serato I am not having that problem since Serato is constantly talking to the drive... I will get back to you with any findings If I run into a problem when DJing EDM sets with longer songs. I think the drive goes back to sleep anywhere from 5 to 8 minutes.
DJ 3pm 5:05 AM - 25 September, 2006
Quote:
3PM, yes, that is very annoying when in use at home with normal programs, etc. But seems like with Serato I am not having that problem since Serato is constantly talking to the drive... I will get back to you with any findings If I run into a problem when DJing EDM sets with longer songs. I think the drive goes back to sleep anywhere from 5 to 8 minutes.

i've been having the problem when dumping out programs to tape for air. the show is 26:46 long, so in theory fcp should be reading that drive constantly for nearly a half hour but between 10-20 minutes into the show the drive has a spin up/down cycle.

i am curious as to the exact time it takes for this thing to sleep, not that there seems to be any utility to change/fix it.
DJ BIS 8:26 AM - 25 September, 2006
I called the folks at Seagate a while ago to see if there was a way to disable the spin-down power saving feature, and they said that there was no way to fix it, stop it or update it in the future. He told me exactly how long it takes for it to spin down and I forgot. It seems like a very short time to me, but its probably more than 8 minutes I guess.

For long mixed files it probably does act quircky eh? Gotta do a search in the middle of the mix or something just so that it stays "awake"...

Still, this drive is my favorite out of all that I have used yet.
DJ BIS 4:41 PM - 15 October, 2006
DJ3pm, Update, i am with you now man. I have enough experience with the drive now and I am officially annoyed by this power saving feature on the Seagate drive and will be updating you with more on a way to fix it. I ran into a few close calls in which the drive had to spin up as I came back to load a new song. NOT GOOD.

I am searching the web for some kind of tool that will help me keep the drive "alive", so if you find something please post it here, SEAGATE EXTERNAL USERS! Thanks!
DJ Stuart (AR) 5:38 PM - 15 October, 2006
Mad dog multimedia....sounds like crap!

www.djstuart.com.ar
DJ Silk 4:37 PM - 16 October, 2006
Mad Dog Multimedia is like the Old school Jaguar's....looks great...runs like shit! LOL