Same Macbook Pro for DJing and Producing/Daily Use? Or No?

S

Suprarick

New member
Hey guys,
I currently use two Macbook Pro's. One is a dedicated 2011 Macbook Pro for DJing only. I keep minimal apps on it but I keep all my music on the internal 1 TB drive.
The other Macbook Pro I use for every-day use as well as keeping my DAW (Logic Pro) and all my samples on there (everything in the internal drive as well).

Question:
New Macbook Pro's come with small solid state internal drives. Definitely not enough storage space to keep all my music files and samples on. My question is this: Instead of using two Macbook Pro's, should I just use one for everything?
For instance: I will only keep the OS, VST's, Licenses, and my necessary Apps (Like Serato and Logic Pro) on the internal solid state drive.
For my daily tasks and production samples and projects I could keep those all on one dedicated external hard drive.
For my DJ gigs I can bring a dedicated DJ external drive with all my songs on it.

What do you think? Should I keep using two Macbook Pro's? Or should I get the new macbook pro and just use external drives for pretty much everything? My main concern is speed, reliability, etc. etc. thanks!
 
Yeah unless somehow it's really affecting you. I'd just get some solid external HDD's too and have one for DJing tracks, sets, recordings, backups etc, and one for production, samples, sounds, stems, project backups etc Then have what you need on your Macbook, but don't work off of the external disks though just use them for storage and transferring files. Maybe keep two backups for both just to be safe.
 
Last edited:
I'm confused. You said at the end to not work off the external disks just to use them for storage. But in the beginning you mentioned to use one for DJing. A little confused and this is exactly what I'm wondering. I currently do everything with my internal disk. I'm a little nervous about DJing with all my songs on the External drive and none on the internal drive since the internal drive will just hold the OS and necessary apps like Serato and Logic Pro.

Do other DJs and producers do this? Or do you all like to perform using internal drives only... thanks
 
Sorry. I meant like you have one for just DJing files etc that you would copy what you need to your macbook to work on, whether it's just tracks you want to mix and record or a recording you want to edit etc. Then the same for production, so you copy the samples, sounds whatever you need for said project over to your macbook to work with so you have what you need on the macbook, and then separate original copies of things still on the external hard drives. I didn't mean work off the external drive, although you can. If you're just working off of the external hard drive itself and you have no files you need on your macbook to produce, you'll need to connect the external drive every time, same with the working off one for DJing and if it's a live situation you don't want that drive to fail, when it's much easier to have it as a storage option and copy what you need to use over to work with on your internal drive, while still having original copies on the external drives. That way you'd be working internally and having seperate storage options to take from.

Whether you really want a second macbook to use depends on how you find it, if your macbook is slow and stuff with all the software on and you've let the drive etc get full then maybe you want to make some space it's up to you. People have different setups for sure, using back-ups etc is just good practice especially professionally, you don't want to make life harder for yourself in certain situations, when you can prepare things to minimize risk as best as possible. So you have to think of certain problems that could happen and do what you can, if you're using say Traktor you'll want to back up the root directory, the music collection, if you ran off of iTunes you'd want to backup the media folder, maybe a time machine backup for macbook etc

People work differently so they do different things, you have to figure out what's best for you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top