Apologies in advance for the length of this post, however this relates to a multi-pronged balls-up of a set recently, so my objective is to establish what went wrong, and then to take steps to minimise the chances of it happening again, without sacrificing too much usability.
I use a DDJ-RX with a HP EliteBook Folio 1040 G1 with an i7-465OU CPU @ 1.7GHz, 8GB RAM, and a 500GB SSD, running Windows 10 and Rekordbox 5.4.1. My entire database of 74K tracks is on a 2TB external drive. I also have about 350MB of movie files on that external drive.
When I opened my laptop at the gig, Rekordbox was already open, and while it was working fine the day before, this time it was “Not Responding”. I gave it a couple of minutes and then rebooted the laptop. After it booted back up, when I went to click on the RB icon on the taskbar, the program didn’t launch. Now, sometimes I have to click on the RB icon two or three times before it launches RB, but this time it wouldn’t launch at all. After a couple more reboots and further unsuccessful attempts to launch RB, I switched to my backup laptop. This was the first time I had ever had to use my backup laptop, and for about a minute I felt quite pleased with myself for dragging a 2nd laptop around to all of my gigs on the off chance something would go wrong. The smug feeling didn’t last long.
The backup laptop launched the RB immediately, but even though the correct drive was chosen, RB couldn’t find the database.
After some more switching back and forward between laptops, I eventually got RB to launch in the original laptop, however it now also couldn’t find the database. In the end I just started importing the entire database from scratch, playing tracks and/or bits of pre-mixed sets as they appeared, continually trying to get closer to the vibe I was originally after. I went straight out the next day and bought a 3.5mm to RCA lead for my phone - wish I had one on the day! (I thought I had one but must have misplaced it)
Often when I went to load another track RB would become non-responsive, resulting in another laptop reboot, and the venue having to switch to their venue music, so in the end I just stuck a mix on and just left it. The laptop was obviously working overtime to try and import a 74K track database while still getting asked to perform operations within RB. Needless to say I was sweating bullets and this was the worst DJ experience I’ve ever had.
An I.T. mate told me the next day that relying on a USB-connected hard drive in a live environment is just tempting fate, and I should either get a laptop with two drives, or just transfer all non-vital files off the main laptop, and keep a stripped down version of my database on that. I would keep my entire database on the external drive, and use the backup laptop for all my music sorting. The backup laptop is a Sony VAIO, S Series, VPCSB18GG, Intel Core i7-2620M Processor 2.7Ghz, running Win7 Professional (64 bit), 4 RAM and 500GB, but the battery is stuffed and the laptop won’t work without the power cable.
Another option would be to do a version of the above. Use my main laptop for all my music sorting and this would be connected to the external drive with the full database. This would be the setup for my gigs. The backup laptop would have my core playlists on it, located on its internal hard drive (to minimise the chances of the original issue from ever happening again), and I would add/remove playlists/tracks folders to that database as the need arose.
So without rushing out and spending $$$ on new hardware, ie, a controller with USB drives, can I please get some suggestions on ways to make my current setup less likely to invoke cardiac arrest? Also, if anyone has suggestions as to what went wrong they would also be appreciated.
Would be handy if you could export tracks/playlists to a phone in case of emergencies.
On a final note, when I finished re-importing the database, it was 4K tracks short. Not sure how that happened either?
