Where do you store your music? Internal or External?

Some Djs buy the newest macbooks with the least amount of space just to say they have the new one. And buy a 1 or 2 tb ssd. Just buy a macbook with a tb of space. It might be expensive. But you're investing in your business.

Thank you sir this was the video I need to see. I hate having externals and I hated having that one folder on my desktop with all my music in it,I’d always be scared of it getting deleted. So now I know exactly where to put it and will no longer have the fear of the hard drive wire shorting or coming out in the middle of a gig!

Great info... Thanks

Thanks for the advice mate

I have been saying this for years. thanks for doing this video, good stuff. consolidate your drive. just put the music you use and need. keep the Mili Vanilli music on an external HD :)

Hey Nick, great video for the DJs out there who are less tech savvy. One thing I think that's important to mention is that having an external drive as a backup is important too. Internal drives can definitely fail, but they do less so because external drives tend to be made with cheaper flash memory. These days you can pick up an NVMe enclosure and a 1TB SSD for around $20 and $80 (canadian dollars) respectively which would provide similar reliability to an internal drive, and speed that isn't quite as fast as an internal drive but certainly more than enough for Serato. These are the drives which usually are used as internal drives in any half decent computer.

This was on my mind since March but couldn’t figure it out.. thank you for the tip... great content 👍

15 years so far ive been external. I've owned 3 laptops that still run today. Im on the M2 series now. Reads my HHD like butter. ive owned 6 External HHDs and they still work today. I like how im able to take my music library anywhere and use it to dj or edit my music anywhere i want without my laptop.

great video

Dope. It's optimal

Answered my exact question lol. I thought I NEEDED to store my music in my iTunes or music app whatever tf you want to call it in order to have serato read it. This is life changing!

I use external. It's personal preference and there really isn't a great deal in it. If you use good quality external drives, I use USB3 / SSD externals which I put together myself, you won't notice any speed difference between this and an internal drive. The choice comes down to if you run out of space and want to upgrade. It's a bigger deal if you want to replace your internal drive than an external one. On the subject of internal hard drives reliability, they are exactly the same as any other hard drive. They break, they aren't special. A fact we've all grown accustomed to is how good they are. They last but they can break that's why we have backup software.

BOTH!!

Hey Nick, Love this video! Great information. Would you be interested in presenting a video on how to move our music files as you just showed. I’m not very computer sava, but once someone shows the path, I’m on my way. Keep the videos coming!

I only keep the dj app on my computer. Music on external. And then a second external HD or two as backup. Now, if my laptop has an issue, I can just move the external HD to the second laptop and I’m good to go

Here's my issue though, my computer is running out of memory and causing issues for me. So now I'm considering going to external... I've literally had audio distortions due to memory.

You’re the man. Just saying. 🐊

Hey Nick, I see that you’re using a new MacBook Pro. A cool thing that you can do is to use a good USB C hub that has power. I’m a video dj and with my USB C hub I have my mixer, hdmi (for Serato video) , a midi controller and power all connected to the hub and only one cable goes to my Mac. I bought a USB C hub on Amazon and a USB C right angle extension cable for the hub. I can hide all the ugly cable mess in my coffin and have only the one cable connected to my laptop. Looks super clean.

Awesome video, can you made a video on how to clean up a Mac Pro, for serato dj PDO usage only, please, new sub here, love your channel

I have a question for you Nick. I am using Dropbox with my songs all on a local computer. I am using a Windows computer so my songs are all on my "D" drive. Serato puts a folder in the "My Music" folder on the "C" drive as well as a folder on the "D" drive where all the music is located. All of this is on my All-In-One Dell Desktop. We have 4 Alienware Laptops that we use for DJing. So we make sure the songs on Dropbox are all actually on each of the Laptop hard drives not just in the cloud. So far so good right? Can I just copy the Serato folders and put them in the same spot on the Laptops? I am trying to avoid using Symbolic Links etc. I appreciate your help very much. And the guys at Cratehackers.com told me you had a video on this but I can't find it. I watched this one and I learned things but not sure it answered my question. Thanks again!

I don't use a controller (yeah, I'm one of those guys), but I was always under the assumption that the more files you had on your laptop hard drive, the slower it would run. That's why I have kept everything on externals all these years. I might have to try the internal hard drive to see how that works.

Both, I have 2 dell laptops both have 32gig sdd's for my operating systems and programs, my music is on mechanical 500gb, internal, hdd and i keep everything backed up on a 500 gb external!

Hi Nick, this may be a dumb questions, if i already keep my music internally on my mac, how would I go about backing it up on my external HD? I don't want to have to bring my external HD to every gig, just want it as a backup in case anything happened to my computer. Thanks!

Thank you Nick. Can you or do you have a video on how to go aboyt transfering all your stuff from an old 2012 macbook pro to a new one

Hey Nick i totally agree! I put all my music into my internal about 6 months ago and it's the best thing I ever did. Also I made crates where I store my music like exactly how I created my crates in Serato. This way when I add more music I simply tag it to the correct crate, color code it and drop it in Then when I want to add it in Serato I open file, find whatever crate/crates I added to, click on the crate in Serato, click on the name of the crate in file and drag right down into the library section, and it will just only add whatever song or songs into that crate that I just added I had too many scary issues with externals over the years and I've felt 100% more safe ever since I switched Never an issue

Yes I had a External died but good thing I had a backup

Nick good lookin out

Do you have virus protection on your Serato only laptop, if so what do you use? Do you pay for a program, or I heard AVG, mcAfee, etc all them free ones are not good to use?

So what memory do you have on your internal drive? If you keep adding videos or mp3s it's going to eat up memory like crazy

Sup Nick under the Music folder I see 2 folders one that’s _serato_ and another that also says music, any idea why the 2nd music folder is there ?

My current setup djay pro AI M1 iPad Air external 1tb ssd loads up instantly.

Dude, The Desktop file issue!!! Thank you for your suggestion!!!! 👍💯

The only down side is that one day your laptop doesn't start up your screeeewed

My music is on an internal M.2 ssd. It's 1TB and separate from my M.2 ssd that my OS is installed on. I also have a server that automatically syncs my files between my 2 computers.

I have 2 4TB 2.5" external each cost me £85 but back up a few years to 2012/13 i git a powered 3.5" 4tb external hard drive for about £150. when i had a 2009 iMac i did a gig with it and afterwards i got home turned it on and had a white screen and it turned out the internal hard drive failed. so don't jinx any thing

Looking to purchase an M1 or M2 my only issue is memory do I spend more and get internal memory or get something more affordable and purchase 2 SSD externals.

I have it external right now .. and like to move it to internal .. just wondering how to manage this .. can you explain?

Keep a back up drive other than your house. Back up your computer and hard drive on the cloud too.

My music is on internal but I have 2-3 backups on externals. I update them all regularly. One backup is NOT enough. Two is the minimum for me.

While you did mention pros of internal, you didn't mention anything about the pros of external.

You do need to buy an external drive to back up all your music. What do you do if something happened to your Mac?

Where do you find a laptop with a 8 terabyte drive? I have 6TB in karaoke files alone, on average to stay up to date you have to add50-75 files a month, I have to run an external NAS drive with multiple hard drives to achieve storage big enough

Always keep everything on my internal everything backed up on externals

Now do a video on 5 reasons to put your music on an external SSD.

Studio setup where the master library resides and is backed up opened Serato Lite in 7.81 seconds. What's a HADRIVE? haha Internal hard drives will fail Nick - be sure and keep everything backed up and a spare laptop at the gigs.

Would 2013 MacBook Pro 15 inch with the Core i7 2.7ghz cpu, 16gb memory, 750gb SSD and built in camera running the latest OS Monterey 12.4

I put my music (MP3s) on internal drive… but i would like to add an external HD for videos (MP4 files). I haven’t been able to find a video showing me how to do MP3s on internal HD and MP4 on external HD.

90% of my music is videos... I do Hispanic 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation parties and I have to have my external hard drive and it's 4tb of music to please all kinds of requests... Yes I know there are a million of streaming services but trust me when I tell you those streaming services don't have that Mexican band from that little Mexican town... and that's why my hard drive it's good to me. Besides... I remember when I started Serato strongly suggested to used external hard drives that were self powered. There is and important thing I do... The music is in no more that two path folders, for example: Hip hop and in that folder I have 90', Bay area, Slap's etc... No for the music I played all the time at clubs and events my folder is 4PLAY and in it all the songs that way the load way faster.

were you able to delete all of the other stock apps?

Man I’m going through this right now I bought a Mac Air I switched from Windows 10 now music on my PC that’s not on my hard drive I use with the Mac book I remember Jeff saying he plays from his external Hard Drive I need to get more Techie

Now what happens when I run out of storage on my Mac?

I keep some hot toonz on laptop 👨‍💻 and use Samsung T5 ssd , small and efficient and tucked away

I just bought a new M1 TouchBar

I know this is 2022, but did I hear correctly that you deleted iTunes from your laptop ?

External 2tb ssd because have a flac based library.

It’s actually cheaper to buy a better quality external ssd than it is to extend the storage option when buying a new Mac.

I am a PC engineer of 20 years - and I think there are reasons as you say for internal over external BUT I had an internal drive die on me last week Booooom GONE devastation the world ends this is not the first time either and was an good Kingston SSD only 8 months old (stuff fails and when it does its never good) now all you say is true but an external backed up properly and synced with another drive gives best security at an event (oh and other drives are available in non ORANGE lol) Now you could do all you say with an internal and have that sync to a backup drive that would be great I moved from internal to external a while back and its easy to have one drive that has a real time sync software to keep your music in two places better three I also move between devices a lot I run a Windows Laptop not a preference just Windows is where most of my world lives I like Mac but very pricey I had a 2015 i7 PRO was great BUT I HATE DONGLES that seems to be the norm now with the latest APPLE macs Can I take this opportunity to say I also run HD Videos for DJing not been an issue smooth running's with external drives and controller connected my back Laptop has a large HDD in but only has a basic get out of jail music file on it the main playout unit the same I find keeping a external HDD a little easier to keep current as I move from Laptop to Laptop and home desktop But love your videos keep em coming lots of good stuff but this one did have a few points to challenge in mine and only my opinion :-) Oh and my SERATO with external running Windows 10 64bit and i7 6th gen 16Gb mem and a 6Tb Seagate drive - www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C7V494X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I know thats a larger drive but this one also loads just as fast 5Tb WD- www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07GK2PC5V/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 loaded in 21seconds and about 60/70 crates of both Music and Video Look forward to your next vid as I say keep em coming fella

Wtf !!! 4 when I got my m1 they didn’t have the 4 !!!

External only

djay pro and vdj takes 5 seconds to open with an external drive. That's a serato thing.

Having a 1 TB of music in your internal drive won't slow down your computer?

Great advice. I have all my music internally in one folder (music). If you tag all of your songs correct you don't need specific genre, decade etc folders on your computer. One thing I wanna do is have like Xmas, holiday folders, random songs...on an specific external that is then organized so when you do have those 2 weeks a year you plug in your external and those crates only show up when it's plugged in. (So I don't see all my versions of all I want for Christmas when I search for all) haha

Back up in cloud drive always!! HDD die!

Great video per usual! You can also set your main folder in the serato auto import folder so it automatically imports your files into serato. See video below kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jcepd6t40synnH0.html

It's shit that we have to do this, computers these days are so powerful and serato is just robbing resources because of their lazy coding.

Jajaja Orange as shit Jajaja you are to much lol love your videos tho.

Always used internal HD. And brought the back up Mac with me. Well wouldn’t you know when you get lazy and don’t update the old Mac. HD in new Mac shits the bed. Old shit music and no phase wireless so super shit show.

Do the work and save $400. Don't be a apple fan boy and save $1000s

Virtual DJ on a Windows loads faster lol