USB Drives For DJs: 6 Crucial Tips For Trouble-Free Use

For many DJs who use standalone or all-in-one DJ equipment, who export their music to USB drives to DJ without a laptop, one of the biggest frustrations is exporting to USB and the time it takes.

Not only is this often painfully slow, but it can be really annoying when you’re DJing at home, preparing music, buying new songs, mixing with them, going back to buy more, and constantly exporting, importing, and copying from your laptop to your drive, and so on.

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Personally, it’s one of the things that makes me still prefer using my laptop unless I’m DJing out, because of the speed of DJing straight from a laptop. (Indeed, I’ll give you a great tip for that later on.)

For now, though, I’d like to share a few things we’ve learned in the community discussing this issue recently, along with some best practices. USB DJs, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

1. Get a really fast USB drive

In fact, get two or three. It’s a good idea to invest in drives that are fast, as copy speed varies immensely. For instance, I have a well-regarded but old model by a company called Corsair, and I also have a brand new certified “fast for DJs” model from DJ Tech Tools.

I’ve tested them both alongside an SD card taken out of one of our 4K video cameras here in the studio, because some DJ equipment lets you use SD cards instead of USBs. There’s a wide gap between the best and worst media when it comes to USBs and SDs. Watch the accompanying video to see the difference.

My friend Mixmaster G, who knows about these things, says that you should not only have one for each player you’ll be DJing on just in case, but a spare one as well. He recommends using a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your USBs instead of repeatedly exporting the same content from your laptop DJ software, because it’s much faster and ensures consistency across drives.

2. Format your USBs correctly

I often turn to my friend Drew Bach for the latest on this kind of advice (Drew is another highly knowledgeable name in the industry). He recommends that if you’re using macOS, nowadays you should use Mac OS Extended (HFS+) formatting rather than the older FAT32, which was traditionally recommended – including by us.

Drew says this format has broad compatibility with most gear made in the last decade, and as a native Apple format, it’s significantly faster for exporting files on macOS compared to FAT32 (which is ultimately a Windows format). If you’re using a Windows computer for DJing, though, you should stick to FAT32.

3. Reformat your USBs after every five or so syncs

Anecdotal evidence shows that after around five syncs, exports to USBs can slow down noticeably. Reformatting the USB will resolve the issue and ensure faster subsequent syncs.

It’s crazy, isn’t it? But it just underlines the frustration many DJs feel about having to go through this to get their music onto their gear. It is what it is, though, and if you’ve got a slow drive, a reformat might be just the ticket.

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Get your workflow right!

One mistake DJs who are new to digital sometimes make is not understanding that the master music collection lives on your laptop inside Rekordbox, and your USB drives are only the playlists that you want to take with you to any particular gig. They are not your master collection! Temporarily organising your music in Rekordbox, putting it on a USB drive, and then deleting it from your computer is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Instead, have a master collection properly organised and maintained on your laptop. Keep that backed up for safety, and only export to USB music that you want to play away from the laptop temporarily. There is never a case where that USB should be treated as your master music collection.

 

 

4. Consider using a modern portable SSD drive instead

SSD drives have no moving parts – these are the same kind of hard drives found in phones. They’re small, easy to plug into DJ gear with a short supplied cable, and can have considerable performance advantages over most USBs.

Many DJs have switched to using these because they find them faster and more reliable. Samsung makes some good ones. Just make sure you get one with high transfer speeds to enjoy the advantages.

5. Never pull your USBs out of a computer or your DJ equipment without first ejecting them

This is a surefire way of corrupting your USB, and it’s one of the most common reasons for this to happen, again according to my friend Mixmaster G.

That little button by the USB socket is there for a reason on your DJ equipment. And that little warning that pops up when you yank a USB drive out of a computer is again there to tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

It’s just one extra step, and it could save you from losing access to all your music at the worst possible time.

6. Bypass all of this entirely when practising at home

Nowadays, all standalone DJ systems can also be plugged into your laptop, which, after all, is the place where you’re downloading and organising your music. While this might not be ideal for the club – since the whole point of this gear is not needing a laptop – it’s much more convenient at home. You can just connect your laptop to your standalone DJ gear and DJ without the need to import or export anything.

To be clear, we’re not talking about controlling different DJ software with your gear. Your standalone gear will work exactly as you’re used to, but in this case, it will now refer to the music you have stored on your laptop, effectively treating it like a big hard drive.

Go here next: How To DJ On Standalone Gear Without Exporting To A USB

The advantage is that you have a fluid workflow between downloading and adding new tracks to your music library and DJing with them, without having to go through the extra stages and time commitments of exporting to USB, removing from the laptop, plugging into the standalone gear, and so on.

When it comes to playing your gig, you should then export to your USB, SD card, or SSD, depending upon what you’re using – but this workflow could potentially give you the best of both worlds.

Finally…

We’d love to know what you think. What USB drives do you use? Do you use SD cards instead? Are you an SSD fan, or do you just plug your computer directly into your gear to bypass all of this? Let us know in the comments.