MIXVIBES Dj Community old forum

-- Which drive do you use ? (size, brand, model,)
-- (3.5'' or 2.5'')?
-- SATA, USB, Firewire, IDE?
-- How do you like it?
-- How fast is the transfer rate for you?
-- Ever had a problem or a failure, especially during use or at a gig?

I am looking to buy another Hard drive for use with my Cross Pack when it arrives. I will be using it externally in a SATA to USB (its the only port on my laptop...no Firewire ) hard drive enclosure.

I'm looking at no less 500 GB, 7200 RPM, and leaning towards a Western Digital. Seagate's seem to have a lot more failures

What do you guys and gals think? Views? opinions?

Thanks!,

DJ Michael M

djmichaelm wrote:-- Which drive do you use ? (size, brand, model,)
-- (3.5'' or 2.5'')?
-- SATA, USB, Firewire, IDE?
-- How do you like it?
-- How fast is the transfer rate for you?
-- Ever had a problem or a failure, especially during use or at a gig?

I am looking to buy another Hard drive for use with my Cross Pack when it arrives. I will be using it externally in a SATA to USB (its the only port on my laptop...no Firewire ) hard drive enclosure.

I'm looking at no less 500 GB, 7200 RPM, and leaning towards a Western Digital. Seagate's seem to have a lot more failures

What do you guys and gals think? Views? opinions?

Thanks!,

DJ Michael M

whassup michael,

I think I know what would your concern is but you really don't have to worry. The hard drive on my laptop which hosts Cross is a 2.5", 4200rpm, Sata 1.5 and I run Cross just fine (the dedicated XP partition is only 50Gb)

I think the optimization of your system are more important than the speed of your hdd honestly.

an external drive via usb will be just fine for what you wanna do but remember that your usb ports tend to use the cpu more than some other bus. make sure your specs are above the recommended ones maybe.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. My hard drive came with only a small drive in it, 250 GB. I have a lot of cd's to convert. I won't settle for anything less than 320kbps quality. So thats why I figured external to be better. Wish I had a port other than USB, like ESATA.

Here is my current laptop specs

Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (SP1,32-bit version)

AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60
o 2.0 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, HyperTransport™ Technology @ up
to 800MHz

AMD M690G chipset

Configured with 3072MB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM (3 GB)

250GB (5400 RPM) Serial ATA hard disk drive

What do you think? Besides space, Good enough?

Thanks man.

djmichaelm

yeah man that will be fine,, I used to use an external harddrive and had no issues with it!
just make sure it is USB2

you could also buy a pcexpress card with ESATA ports
check this for an example.
http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/77277/HARD_DISK_CONTROLLERS_SERIAL_ATA_CONTROLLERS/Belkin/F5U239.asp

Oh Cool!

I have an Express34/54 slot. I always thought is was a PCMCIA slot. Never had to use it. Newer technology apparently. I'm guessing that is alot faster than USB 2.0?

Thanks a bunch man. Mad karma to ya!

Djmichaelm

I got a fire wire card and I like it but it's missing the shorter section of the Belkin card and if bumped it sometimes will disconnect the hard drive. I bought the card before the ones like the featured Belkin one were fairly cheap to buy.

I had a fire wire card on HP some time ago and I loved it.

If you have to buy a case for your hard drive you can get it with ever features you want. I just picked one up for $40 and it has USB/ Fire wire with an internal fan and I haven't had any issues with it so far.

Thanks for the info!

djmichaelm

I have purchased a dual port eSata Express Card from eBay. I got a great deal, around $5.00 fora brand name card, Dynex. The shipping at $6 was more than the product! Still beats the price with shipping of another cheaper /no name card.

But I am still looking for a drive.

I want a drive that I can trust. Not only for the files ( I will be buying 2 of whatever for mirror backup), but for stability during a live gig. I can't have any errors or flaws. Zero Tolerance.

Any Suggesttions? Seems Western Digital is more stable than Seagate. I want speed and stability, at a low price.

Thanks fellas,

Djmichaelm

It may be now. I haven't checked the market in a while. I got Seagates but they are older and I know for a little bit Seagates were buggy. Do a search for best hard drives and you should come up with some information.

I personally prefer 7200rpm 2.5in Seagate Momentus drives for my laptops. These drives have claimed most of the best reviews in recent years thanks to fast data rates, quietest operation and offering the best warranty coverage.

For portability with external drives, I still prefer to use a 2.5in based product because of the benefit of phantom power. Life is hard enough without having to find a power outlet...or some groupie tripping over a power cord.

I still use 3.5in external drives as well, but these I generally leave at home for redundant backup and archive purposes...i keep 4 stacked in the cabinet next to my desk, with a dedicated USB hub attached.

..................................

Western Digital:

Once upon a time I believed Western Digital drives to be among the best in the market...but a few years ago I noticed that quite a few knowledgeable users were experiencing an increasing rate of failure, including myself. In fact, I just threw away a WD drive 2 days ago. It began to make awful high-pitched "whirring" noises, so I quickly backed up what I needed and tossed it.

A year ago I lost my primary Audio drive (500GB WD MyBook) and shortly afterward my redundant backup Audio drive (500GB Phantom with a WD inside)...a horrible coincidence. Inside these were approx. 45,000 tracks of music that I used with my mobile DJ service...all categorized and tagged. Basically I lost years of work, not to mention many many countless hours of file management.

Truthfully, I can't honestly say that I feel that WD drives are BAD. Yet I must admit that in well over 10 years of using them, only recently have I experienced such issues...resulting in around 5 bad drives in the last 3 years or so.

My current portable performance drive is a 250GB 2.5in WD Passport in white (matches my macbook...awe). I haven't had any problems with it so far.

My roommate has a Toshiba Satellite with a WD 320GB internal. It has started clicking...possible bad sectors, and so far chkdisk has had no luck in quarantining them.