Do You use an External Hard Disk Drive for your Shows?

[capnvic]

I am asking this question, because it seems that most everyone has either compressed their KMA files for Hoster or they are stored on a backup hard drive. I have all my songs on an external 160GB hard disk drive. Just want to hear some of your thoughts.

[Lonman]

I have 3 drives in my desktop, 1 80gb for operating system & Hoster, other 2 250gb for music - these are setup so if one fails, the other will take over. But I do also have an external at home for backup purposes if needed.

[swany]

I posted that I keep my backup on the external and I do. I don't even take it with me. I have all my music on the PCs. Right now, I am running two laptops and two rack mounts. Have more disks and dupes than any person should have. I only run, 6,650 DJ songs, and 8,620 KJ songs. It runs just fine on my weakest system a Gateway 160gb laptop with Vista, and only 2048 Ram. Keep Hoster and Hoster Search open. Windows Media Player, My DJ Music files and a search DJ window open. Thing is I've kept records on singers and researched all my DJ and KJ music and only keep what is being used and songs that made the charts then or now. I could likely drop down to 2000 of each and get along just fine. But once in a while.

Thing I'm trying to say is for an external, yeah keep it around and in your database for quick access. But you don't need it for a show if your running a fast PC with at least 100gb hard drive. I have got a myriad of music in both, but I just don't get that much call for Holiday music or I lost my heart in San Francisco.

Since I've leaned up I get more folks singing and less time looking through my books. I take less time to arrange a DJ stack file to play. I went through Wikipedias search for discography to delet also rans and indicate top songs by renaming them with a number 1 in front of the song. Makes it easy for my DJs to just type in a number 1 in their search and pick DJ songs from that list. After that they take requests and get along just fine.

[RIKKI TIKKI]

Everybody here has a system that they have customized to their gigs, and clientele! I love that I can keep all my kma's on a 160 - 250 gb external hard drive. About 11,000 and counting. The drive is a little bit larger than a deck of playing cards, and travels very well!

By culling some of the duplicates from my song books ( I only list the ones that I have selected for best sound, graphics that are in sinc, and generally have the novice singer able to here the background melody line without getting lost. Music Maestro is quality reproduction of original, but many people can't follow the Karaoke version, where the DK version is not necessarily the best reproduction, but words and melody are easiest to follow for the average Karaoke singer. ) I have been able to put about 4000 songs in songbook, and not have the client spending the whole show looking through all 11000 titles and artists and asking which version that is best. The Regulars now have a singers list that I can pull from Hoster 4.02, and all they have to tell me is what mood they are in! ( Are we a lover tonight, or are we a Biache?) Their song selection goes a long way to letting me know who needs the tequila shot(s) !!!

Rick

[madjim- with the Lord]

I have two hard drives in my show machine. One is for backup only. I also have two esternal hard drives that I use for backup. I also have a two drives in one of my test machines not to mention the drive in my other test machine. I also have a new 300gig drive in the box sitting right in front of me.

Back-up, Back-up, Back-up!


Jim

[Monolithent]

I am in a similar boat as the rest of you. I use a quick-swappable 320Gb drive to run my system with a very slimmed down list of only the most overall popular DJ and karaoke songs on it as an extreme case backup. My system has 2 single Tb hardrives in it (that arent even remotely full but I like to futureproof things) one for DJ and one for karaoke. I keep in my truck a pair of 500 Gb externals (cloned to each media drive) and a swappable and cloned 320 Gb drive. I also keep a hail mary copy of my Soundchoice foundation sets under a seat with a small cheap memorex player and a small MP3 playerwith DJ music on it In the event a major computer system component fails. And to top all that I have another set of drives in the house computer that are duplicates of the first three.

I think I may have a trust issue or two.

[marklwood]

Originally Posted by Monolithent

I am in a similar boat as the rest of you. I use a quick-swappable 320Gb drive to run my system with a very slimmed down list of only the most overall popular DJ and karaoke songs on it as an extreme case backup. My system has 2 single Tb hardrives in it (that arent even remotely full but I like to futureproof things) one for DJ and one for karaoke. I keep in my truck a pair of 500 Gb externals (cloned to each media drive) and a swappable and cloned 320 Gb drive. I also keep a hail mary copy of my Soundchoice foundation sets under a seat with a small cheap memorex player and a small MP3 playerwith DJ music on it In the event a major computer system component fails. And to top all that I have another set of drives in the house computer that are duplicates of the first three.

I think I may have a trust issue or two.

Have you looked at DROBO yet. Rock solid & Future proof. Very happy with mine so far. I've had it about 6 months now. Plus you can use those old hard drives without worries.

[capnvic]

Thanks for your replies. Just to give you a bit of background. I have two backup drives and two portable drives. I create disk image backup of my main external drive on one external 120 and the other on a 160gb hard disk drive, (I only have 23,000 songs, and haven't cleaned out the dupes) and a complete image of one of my laptops on a 60GB drive.

I am planning on purchasing an External portable drive like one of the WD Passport drives or one of the Seagate FreeAgent portables, since they will run off two USB ports, and they are getting less expensive to purchase. I want to cut down what I have to carry to the very basic.

[billyo]

i have 3 ext hhd. on my show laptop, and a cloned hhd for emergency, and i have 2 ext. hhd on my back-up laptop and also a cloned drive... and i have 2 ext. drives ( master drives ) and 2 cloned drives for each of my laptops at home as back-up ,all my dj and vcd ( dat. file ) music is on my int. drive..you'll never know what will happened..better be safe than sorry!!..

[Joe Nieves]

Yah

I use it all the time especially for my VJ shows. (SimpleTech 350 Gig Usb Drv. Red Nice)

[Monolithent]

Originally Posted by marklwood

Have you looked at DROBO yet. Rock solid & Future proof. Very happy with mine so far. I've had it about 6 months now. Plus you can use those old hard drives without worries.

The DROBO is an interesting item but it looks like a simple Raid style setup in an external case and upgrading drives really doesnt look that different from changing out a drive in a normal external case. Not a bad thought but not really gonna help me much. Just more money to spend for something that comes with nearly every new motherboard.

Sorry for being gone for so long as well, I know we started this conversation months ago.

I think I'm gonna start my first thread in Singer's & Host's Wisdom now. This topic got me thinking about something that might be of use.

[prober]

I have a complete redundant system (2 external 250 gb hard drives and 2 lap tops) that I take on every show. I also have another external 250 gb hard drive kept at home with all the music backed up. Since I DJ and KJ failure is not an option.

[Joe Nieves]

I also picked up an addittional G-Tech 320 Gig 7200 Rpm for Video/Audio Files only and use my Simple-Tech 350 Gig for Karaoke.

Now the shows run smoother.

Joe....

[inthelimelight]

I purchased the ruggedized laptop and software from MTU a little over a year ago- I have done all of the updates and I am still having problems with the files not playing properly- The system came with 2 gigs of ram- I have been told by other computer people that it is not enought to run my program- also do you have to update all of the upgrades or can you skip- I did not do the 4.7 - I just did the 4.8 - would that make a difference? Thanks.

[billyo]

[quote=inthelimelight;91712]I purchased the ruggedized laptop and software from MTU a little over a year ago- I have done all of the updates and I am still having problems with the files not playing properly- The system came with 2 gigs of ram- I have been told by other computer people that it is not enought to run my program- also do you have to update all of the upgrades or can you skip- I did not do the 4.7 - I just did the 4.8 - would that make a difference? Thanks.[/quote

you have enough memory to run hoster , before you upgraded did you do all the recommended changes, and did you do all the custom updates too?

[inthelimelight]

Yes, I went through all of the changes that were listed on the page- I was up to version 4.6 did I have to do 4.7 before 4.8- or does 4.8 encompass 4.7 changes?

[billyo]

Originally Posted by inthelimelight

Yes, I went through all of the changes that were listed on the page- I was up to version 4.6 did I have to do 4.7 before 4.8- or does 4.8 encompass 4.7 changes?

4.07 was not a stable upgrade, that's why they went up to 4.08, and also i hope you don't mind me saying this, but if you're having problems with hoster, you should post on the hoster forum, there's a lot of people that can help you with your problem..

[inthelimelight]

Yes, I was thinking of doing that- just posted on the thread because of the external hard drive topic-thanks. I also have a call into another KJ that has had the software for a long time to see what he says

[bryant]

Originally Posted by inthelimelight

Yes, I went through all of the changes that were listed on the page- I was up to version 4.6 did I have to do 4.7 before 4.8- or does 4.8 encompass 4.7 changes?

To answer your question: Yes, you CAN go straight to Hoster 4.08 from 4.06.