I attended a friends 40th on Saturday in Suffolk at a rather nice venue the DJ's Light show was fantastic the evening was in full swing by 10pm then disaster struck......The DJ's hard drive decided to give up.
He tried his hardest for about 20mins to resolve the problem but to no avail. No backup cd player!! no back up laptop. All the guy could do was to moan about losing £5,000 worth of music and who was going to pay for his damaged hard drive.
He blamed the Hotel for the problem saying that it was a mains spike, I stated to him that maybe he should have had a backup of his music and used a surge protection socket.
Anyway the evening ground to an abrupt halt, the evening was ruined and the DJ left with less money in his pocket very embarrased at what had happened.

What would you do?

Are computers / HDD players reliable?

Do you have back up?

What would you have done in this situation?

Hard drives do fail.. and in my job i see it most weeks.

Obviously he should have had a backup in place! Crikey! anything, even his Nan's stereo which he leaves in his car just in case....

With regards to losing his music...

Staples had a Maxtor 160gig external hard drive for £38 in their sale last week!
Your music files are the most important thing in your Disco! treat them like gold, back them up!!
I keep my external hard drive in a fireproof safe!

When a CD/record gets damaged all you risk losing is the music on that disc, you still have the vast majority on your collection. When you go digital you are putting all your eggs in one basket and damage to the HD means losing everything. I have 4 external hard drives with my catalogue saved on them. I carry 2 to every gig and at some gigs I also have CD decks on standby. I take as many precautions as possible. A surge protector is essential, as is regular testing of equipment, and taking care of your equipment properly.

I agree totally

Im looking at a backup hard drive at min and have started carrying backup cd player

I carry;
-USB HDD - a full mirror of the DDS80 internal HDD. This can be plugged in, and works fine.
-Backup Laptop (eeePC), this can connect to either the DDS80 HDD (via USB), or the backup HDD
-16GB SD Card (with recentish "Now CDs" and other compilations - again, only for backup)

I sometimes use the eeePC for notes during the gig, and the SD card is always on the internal slot, so I'm only really carrying a 2.5" USB Drive and the very tiny Netbook (which has a solid-state drive - so no moving parts!)


I also have the data mirrored onto a server at home, the server is in a hidden location (so a break-in shouldn't result in nicked music)

HDDs are so cheap now, there is no excuse not to have back-ups.
Use a free tool to sync between drives/directories and you're sorted.

I've also seen HDDs go down- at my day job, we've recently paid £1500 for data recovery.
If the DJ's music is legit, and can't be replaced, this is an option (we had dual failures - hence the high cost)


We should have some back-up. CD-users are best off, but Laptops and external drives are fairly cheap- and are a legitimate expense (so tax deductible)

Thinking about possible failures - and how to get around them BEFORE they happen is critical.
The cost of a issuing refund, and loss of reputation will be more than a spare Laptop+External HDD.

Jason

I say make sure you have a backup of everything! Spare amp, cd player etc so at least 'the show can go on'. If you blow one speaker..well at least you have another one. If you can't afford spares..then plan 'workarounds' in advance..for example moving speakers over to one amp channel..is it possible...having a 'get you out of trouble' wallet of popular CD tracks (or even a portable MP3 player with adapter lead)...just ANYTHING to keep the customers happy and not ruin the happy couple's wedding (or whatever..)! Even a hotline to a retired DJ friend who can zip over!

PS Thanks for the mic lead Alan I still haven't forgotten after all this time!!

Spot on!
Good tip on the MP3 player - cheap as chips, and most hold a decent amount of tracks.

Also working out how to work off one amp channel (so my 8 Ohm speakers will become a 4 Ohm total load, the amp will be fine, those with 4 Ohm speakers should check their amp is ok at 2 Ohms)
A mixer failure is pretty harsh, but you could run from CD/MP3 player direct to amp (if you have the right cables), certainly it'll be a struggle..

I found those external hard drives are not keen on being bounced down stairs or the wrong voltage being put through them.My spare room is like a graveyard for them.

Now ive got spares everywhere...and one buried under the Patio (Brookside??).

I stiil like to switch from Laptop to CD and back again in an evening....keeps me on my toes??

I Carry 2 laptops and 2 hard drives and an ipod. But unfortunately my laptop did die at a gig 3 months back, no trouble really. Booted the other one up and was up and running within 10 minutes. But since then I have found a new job for my roadie.

He looks after the 2nd laptop and hard drive and mimics everything that I play. So in effect we have 2 laptops playing the same thing it might be one second off or whatever, but if the laptop goes down then I put the other laptop fader up and its only down for 1 second.

Its a little more hassle but I think its worth it,

I can't believe that anybody would rely on any single piece of equipment, let alone a computer, for such an important event, and not have back-up. That's just awful. Kinda reminds me of when I first started out....ahem.

For the love of God please don't let this turn into a Bose bashing debate, but, one of the reasons I decided on the pole was because it can take up to four inputs. ie. one pole can take a mic and any combination of up to three portable CD players, MP3 players, etc. This means I could lose my mixer, cd player, laptop and wireless mic on the same night and still be able to continue. Of course, if the pole packed in then I could use it wedge the door shut in the room I was hiding in!

One other point to note is that the guests at the wedding, the venue staff and everyone else who hears about this failure on the grape vine will always recount the story of the laptop DJ whose computer broke. More bad press.

I take a back up everywhere i go, I also have dual boot on my laptop so if xp go's down I fire vista up, plus I carry various pre mixed mini discs incase of emergencies.....

Its a complex piece of equipment with lots of electronic and moving parts, of course its possible that it could fail or malfunction.

Point me to a piece of equipment - ANY equipment which is guaranteed trouble / problem free and will never break down......or your money back.

CD's, Laptops, Hard Drives, Amplifiers, Speakers, Mixers all rely on 100's of tiny components, any of which could easily fail ruining your night and hitting your reputation.

The solution is a simple one.

If you use a laptop / pc then have another back up laptop / pc with you, or CD's

If you use CD's then have another CD player or laptop / pc in reserve

If you use turntables have back up turntables or any combination of the above as back up

Hardly brain surgery, however this skimping and saving is false economy but just bolsters how little money and profit some within the industry are earning.

Either way, if your laptop breaks down the worst that can happen is you get a bad reputation and lose money, and yes you should be avoiding the situation by having a back up plan. However given the numbers of Dj's driving around in cars which are not properly insured is far more worrying, as for a start it is illegal, enforced far more religiously than 'DJ related offences' and it can carry criminal convictions and in some cases the 6 points given, can result in a driving ban and significant insurance premiums for the next 3 years.....at least. This penny pinching puts the rest of us who are insured correctly and for the correct occupation at a distinct trading dis-advantage, just the same as those using illegal music and cutting corners on back up equipment. Priorities.....priorities.......priorities.

To throw another question into the ring. We, as Humans are also complex objects filled with parts which go wrong and can break down. What plan do 'you' have in reserve should you be incapacitated due to sudden illness or accident either shortly before or during a gig?. Our responsibilities do not just end at our equipment, or our vehicles, they go way beyond that.

I must say that this is one of the best ideas I have heard for a very long time and keeps the Roadie active too. 10/10. Excellent.



Depends. Generally, yes, but like anything, can break at any time.



Crikey yes - of EVERYTHING. Yes, it takes longer to load/unload but to hell with it. People are paying money for entertainment and expect it.



Easy, switch to one of my 3 backup sources. My main backup (CD player) is racked in and connected so would take 15 secs to load a CD and play it.

My main CD player is very relaible but I may consider loading a CD in CD3 now so all I have to do is put the fader up and press Play. Instant party!

This guy had it coming really - no backup (not even a HDD backup) and is a lesson, albeit an obvious one.

As always Ollie, you're the king of practicality. Definitely follow this second point up though. On the nights when I set up the laptop and the CD decks (the CD decks are built into a unit with a good mixer so I often run the laptop through it) I always have a popular current song loaded in the CD decks and cued up so I can make the transition as seamless as possible.

Oh and the roadie thing mentioned earlier is a fantastic idea. Well done. To take it a step further, if anyone is thinking of mentoring an apprentice DJ, you could get them to mirror you and, if you have the capability, record them to review their cueing/mixing etc.

As said above carry back ups of everything.

I use two laptops both have music externally and internally I also have a twin CD player and a box of CDs.

I also have amps speakers and lights I can put out three discos in one night from my trailer if needed.

This is one point you can sell to a client when they quibble on price.

Nik

Great idea in theory but, if a problem occurs with the electricity supply, such as a spike, then you could lose two laptops in one go.

When I first started I carried two desktop PC's and two 15" CRT monitors with me, must have been bloody mad! But, just in case of electrical problems, I used to take a full size 750va UPS with me as well. That did make me feel well protected from power issues.

These days I take cable testers and 'intelligent' extension cables. I still consider bringing a 'proper' UPS with me though.

This will make you all laugh...
Just had a call from my friend who has received a letter from the DJ with an invoice for: -

replacement hard drive £75.00
Labour to fit above £35.00
replacement laptop £399.00
Lost Music files £5780.00

Total £6289.00

The DJ has deemed that his contract is with my friend so he needs to pay then claim from the hotel.


The guy is having a laugh so my friend is thinking of sending an invoice to the DJ for:- 45 rooms at 80.00 each 150 person buffet at £9.25 per person, room hire £250.00. £300.00 replacement disco £500.00 compensation for having to re-book for another party. (Which has been provisionally booked for 21 Feb)

I can see that this is going to be fun as my friend is a solicitor.......Could be watch this space........

The DJ should be hiding under the nearest rock....not sending out ridiculous invoices!!!

Oh well, it takes all sorts.....

Obviously its not being taken seriously but your friend could have a little fun with him and ask him where the engineers report is, as to the extent of the damage and independant proof of how and why it occured.

Also ask him to provide receipts and itemisation for the £5780.00 worth of music which is alledged to have been lost.

Then tell him that he will only communicate directly with either his insurers, or his solicitor.

Pathetic attempt!!

Hahaha thats good!

And to account for a power supply I have a UPS aswell.

Any more news on this?

Nik

After what I can gather of a bit of banter between the DJ, Hotel and my friend the matter has been settled.
The letter from my friend (Who is a solicitor) to the DJ outlining that he was in breach of contract etc.
The DJ has dropped his claim for the replacement(s) and has also lost out to the hotel for future bookings, as he had created such a problem for both parties.

But on a more positive note the hotel has offered my friend free room hire and £100 of complimentary drinks.
My friend has asked the DJ to chip in as way of an apology but there has been no response so far...
Anyway we get to party again in a couple of weeks providing in not working .

There is a lesson to us all here I feel - Have some sort of Backup.

Having come back to the business only recently I'm still getting all my gear together, but as soon as I can I'll be buying a spare amp, laptop, and drive. I have already used Virtual dj to create some long mixes that I'll be carrying as spares on cd too. I did once have an amp failure at a xmas party, and my friend had to race to my rescue with the spare so I already know how stressful a failure can be!

And he is prepared to use the same DJ??

If the problem was a hard-disk failure, how can he justify attempting to charge for a new laptop?

What a clown.

Always back up your stuff. Its daft not to. Agree with Ben about running two laptops, risks two laptops. I'm sure a party could wait whilst the other laptop booted up, a couple of mins or so wouldnt be too much of a bother at a gig. I think it might build up the atmosphere anyway, if everything dies, and the DJ fixes it in a few mins, hes usually hailed as a hero for saving the day, if the gig is down for only one second, yeah nobody will notice, but you wont get the hero status will you just my two pennarth.

A good point, but often the labour involved in re-installing Windows+DJ software could come close to the cost of a new laptop.
(£40/hr @ approx 3 or 4 hours + plus the cost of a new HDD)

Not disagreeing. but if the guy is non-technical, it would cost about £200+ just to get the old laptop back up.
From an insurance point of view, it would be written off.
Even if you're technical, it it still time=money.




Back-ups can take may forms. Digital DJ's should carry a spare laptop/playback system with another HDD.
There is a lot to be said from knowing your system is reliable - so PC's should be treated as an instrument (so no surfing/games/email)

I think its best to run a CD player as a backup, clients should be shielded from the technicalities of a PC failure and should not see any long delays.
A large gap would be remembered as you have unreliable equipment, so not likely to get repeat bookings.
Not to say a PC is unreliable - as all equipment will fail at some point.

Fair dues if an Amp/Speaker/Mixer fails (ie you have to re-configure kit, or drag a spare in), but basic playback kit should be covered.
Even a £20 portable CD player (with the latest "now" cd) would cover you whist you boot up a 2nd laptop.

Better still, get a dirt cheap MP3 player with a mix of music, if there is a failure, then a few quick clicks would bring the music back on with only a few seconds of downtime.

You may get a few funny looks from the sudden change in music, but better than a few mins of silence with a crying bride, and an angry groom....

From my experience, bad things happen all the time- we're paid to ensure they are covered.
A "60 quid sid" may not have *any* backup (so party over if the PC/CD/mixer/amp/cables fail), but when we're charging more- it should be justified by ensuring we have checked our possible modes of failure and have them covered as far as possible.

Jason

I cant wait for SSD to become large enough and cheap enough it seems tailor made for us DJ's..fast and reliable.

Half a Terabyte's not big enough for you?

1TB is also apparently available although only for industrial and military use at the moment.


I dread to think of the price though. 250GB is retailing for around the £400 mark at the moment but prices are expected to have settled in a similar range to regular HDDs by this time next year.

For the uninitiated, and not particularly technically-minded, what is SSD?

And what might it mean to a digital DJ?

only quoted half of my statement! and cheap enough!

SSD means solid state drive so instead of a mechanical hard drive with a spinning platter its essentially a big memory stick.
these have a number of advantages for us ..fast read times , vibration is less of an issue in effecting them , they are generally more robust and they aren't too fussy about heat in either being susceptible to it or producing it.

it looks like a standard hard drive and connects in the same way its just solid state memory instead.

SSD are Solid State HDDs, so essentially no moving parts. A bit like a usb pen-drive, but HDD size. No moving parts, nothing can fail, so more reliable.

What it might mean to DDJ's is simply more reliability I guess.

Oh and in response to VOKF, with laptops they usually come with an manufacturers image recovery disk which takes 5 mins to reinstall, not hours. Well, from what I've experienced anyway (Sony/Samsung/Rock/Stone/Fujitsu-Seimens/RM/Elonex) other brands may have to be reinstalled off CD's but to be honest, I dont know anyone that uses CD's/DVDs to restore things anymore. Most people have images on usb hdd or network location. I have back up images for all three types of laptops/computers I have in my house on one pen drive that fits in my pocket. Its bootable, has fast read capabilities and can restore a pc in my house in around 8 mins.

Not bad eh? Comes from being a techie for a living. AND I bought a new laptop t'other day off Ebay for £5.50. BARGAIN.

Very, very helpful and I 100% agree with the point "bad things happen all the time- we're paid to ensure they are covered......when we're charging more- it should be justified by ensuring we have checked our possible modes of failure and have them covered as far as possible."

Hi all!
i have been a laptop dj for the last 6 years since switching from cd's,
i have had very little problems with the laptops as i only use 1 brand from IBM as an industry standard laptop they are nearly bomb proof,
i run 2 laptops with 2 hard drives on each and carry a backup drive of 1tb just incase, as i have had drive failure mainly due to heat in mqrquees during the day i now only buy external drives with built in cooling fans to prevent this problem.
as we all know dear bill gates built windows with faults and severe issues,
the most stable is xp pro with service pack 3,
just load the programs that you need and remember that the laptop is your tool kit and dont let others use it for anything else, no games no internet and no kids !!!
the less junk you put on it the less problems you will have,
oh and if all else fails there is the trusty 20gig ipod with some preset playlists of various music styles available,
i know its a bit belt and braces,
but it will ensure you can keep going for even the longest gigs 10 hours is no problem with the equipment but the dj is liable to "crash freeze, blow up, or blow a fuse if not fed and watered correctly !"

Had a problem with new laptop during valentine's disco. Freestyler crashed and took away half of my fixtures with it... So all lights stopped working... (some had frozen and some had just blacked out).

Managed to get the 4 channel 300w PAR's on sound mode until I dug out the old laptop, and with a little bit of fiddling had it booted and running FreeStyler in about 10 minutes... just about worked using the internal MIC for sound-to-light mode...

I have rack mounted cd player on standby with two cds in it - Latest Now cueud up with something relevant, and usually have some other compilation CD in the other drawer... Also now I carry a spare power amp, and worse-case I can wire up MIC->Laptop->AMP if the mixer fails.. *touches hair/wood*

Cheers,

David

probably have a mini heart attack, followed by the pressing of play on my Sony 1gb MP3 player. I have 3 folders on it, classic disco, Motown and Dance. All these together will last about 2-3 hours. Thats all i have at the moment apart from my laptop so this thread has reminded me of the need for a decent backup. Ideally i would have a exactly similar laptop- i could use it for searching internet and making notes on even if i dont need it as a backup. My experience of using the laptop as apposed to cd players have been mostly fun and exciting. The most annoying thing about this approach is the amount of possible failiures encountered by the DJ. For instance i was let down by a behringer bcd3000 several times because it does midi and audio both at the same time. This sometimes causes Traktor to free and all music freezes with it. Very embarresing. It seems some gear that is supposedly proffessional has not even been properly road tested before release. (Both BCD 300 & the Numark Omni Control have been major let downs for me and many others too)
I Am now using the indigo DJ card & the bcd 3000 as a midi controller only and have not had a problem yet..

I have a backup on pretty much everything i carry a laptop, ipod and single cd player. ok if my laptop goes down its not ideal but can get by. i also run active speakers so one will run without the other and in the venues i do this would be adequate. the only issue i may ever have is if my mixer went down. I dont carry a replacement and dont have the correct wires to bodge it. hmm i think online shopping is due.

Invest in a copy of 'Acronis Migrate Easy'

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/

This is user-friendly software written for the non technical layman and easily, reliably and completely backs up the entire content of hard drives, including software licenses, operating systems, files, music, dj software etc. It 'clones' the drive so completely that its identical in every way and even the laptop won't know the difference.

Simply buy a USB 2.0 / ESATA caddy for the type of drive that your laptop uses, go to a local computer fair and buy a decent quality new hard drive of the same or greater capacity than the existing one.

Install the Migrate Easy software on the main laptop / pc, plug in the hard drive caddy with your 'new' hard drive installed and then follow the the instructions on the program.

Several hours later, you have a 100% working copy, complete in every detail to the main hard drive. Then if the main drive should fail in the 'field' - open the laptop, remove the main drive, plug in the 'cloned' drive and reboot. It will be completely identical in every way.

I've used this software loads of times and it works each and every time, whether you are just migrating everything to a larger capacity drive in order to upgrade or whether you just want a back up.

$39 one off vs £40 an hour for repairs.......Hmmm, I know what i'd be buying

Main playout -Toshiba L10-300/ WD 160gb HD x 2
Backup- Dell latitude WD 160gb x 1
Just in case- Numark CDN22 approx 50 cd`s
just in case back up -ipod 4g
Just in case back up back up- my mobile phone with a couple of hours of music

If all that fails .............I go home....quickly

daryll

hi guys im a new dj myself but i have been helping other djs get on to laptop for the last 2 years. My thorghts on hard drives giving up is yes thats never going to be good but i allways set them up with 2 laptops and the music usb drive but allways have music on the local drive as well so they can change fast as there fingers and move. as SSD Drives are coming down in price i plan to get a 500GB SSD drive for my laptop and split it in to 100GB - 400Gb and have all the music on the 400GB side now what this means is show i have a software problem i can jump over to Cds or the 2nd laptop and keep going. now as the SSD drives are very fast rebooting is more like 12sec to having a runing system but from time to time a reboot wont do the job so what iv done is make up a bootable usb pen with win 7 installer on it and any drivers i need and my DJ software now i timed this from black drive to ready to DJ again and it will take me 15 min to get windows back in freash and sound and VGA installed and VDJ back in and runing with all the music on the 2nd harf of the drive.

so i have

2x laptops one main one back up

6x Cds 2 with Chart 2 with Motown 2 with 80's all floor fillers

1 pen to reinstall the laptop from fresh and VDJ back up and runing

1x USB drive with all the music backed up

1x dual Cd player allways ready to go