best external hard drives for macbook 2017

With multi-tasking laptops that are used for a variety of different processes including Facebook, checking your mail, and clearing last week’s spreadsheet with your boss, it’s a different story, and that’s where things can potentially get a bit wonky.Īlso, some thumb drives are hardier than others – the Corsair Flash Survivor Stealth is an example of a sturdy USB stick that can take a beating, or at least certainly more of a beating than your standard external hard drive. You may be wondering: if DJing with external drives is so risky, then why do club DJs spin with thumb drives on CDJs? DJing with a USB stick in a media player is a different thing – gear like the CDJ-2000NXS2 / XDJ-RX2 / Denon DJ SC5000 Prime are built and tuned with software onboard that are made to specifically perform a single task: to play music from media like thumb drives, SD cards and CDs, nothing more. Even newer USB 3.0 hard disks can suffer from slower track loading times – Joey uses Rekordbox DJ and he says there is a slight lag when loading a track from his external drive compared to loading from his internal drive. Third, external hard drives may have performance bottlenecks – older (or cheaper) hard drives have slower read / write speeds, and that sometimes results in slower track searches or analyses. I have a 500GB external from 2014 that now refuses to work because its USB socket has got wobbly, and while it does power up, it’s no longer recognised by my MacBook Pro. As a result, their reliability can be compromised over time. Second, since external hard drives are portable, they do get mishandled, either accidentally or when they get thrown around in your DJ bag. That’s dead air and additional stress you wouldn’t want to deal with at a gig. It’s embarrassing, and the worst part is it takes a while for your DJ software to recognise the external drive again when you plug it back in. It’s possible to play tunes from an external hard drive, but it introduces a number of potential issues: First, external hard drives can be yanked in a crowded and cramped DJ booth, which of course means playback grinds to a halt (I should know, because this has happened to me a few times when I first started DJing with a laptop). What are your thoughts on this?” Digital DJ Tips says… I am unsure about upgrading to a larger internal SSD due to expense, but I am also unsure about using external hard drives in a live performance environment. I am currently using a MacBook Pro and I am running out of storage space (I only have about 4GB free). Digital DJ Tips reader Jack messaged in: “I’m looking for advice regarding using external hard drives to DJ with.

Best external hard drives for macbook 2017