Older, but ROCK SOLID xp lappy to DJ...with a tiny hard drive?

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Papa Deuce

DJ Extraordinaire
Aug 8, 2006
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I have a rock solid Sony Vaio that I would like to use for DJing. Not sure it has EVER had a BSOD. Problem is that it has a TINY - and partitioned - hard drive. It runs XP, and only has a 30GB HID.... Sony partitioned it as 20 for program files and 10 for everything else.

Can I run my DJ software of choice and have ALL my music run from an external HD.... and I guess I can point all new music to be converted to mp3 to reside on that drive?

I use Rockit, but also plan to add OtsAV.
 
He he -- you don't even wanna know how many gigs I did with a 6 GB drive... :sqcool:

Anyway, Rockit will work fine with all songs on an external -- not sure about OTS, but I imagine it would be no problem for them either.

You might want to check with Bry or Jeff, because I honestly don't know how big an OTS library gets when they convert to their format, and whether or not it has to reside on the internal or not...
 
(I remember when 60 Gig was huge.)

Do you have to original "restore" discs that this machine was likely sold with? For about a hundred bucks you could replace that drive yourself with a 120 or 160 gig drive. With a little bit of time and perserverance, and you could start over with a brand new drive, one that would give you lots more options.
 
Chuck, what is the model # of your Vaio. I am a computer parts reseller, and can get you another much larger drive say a 120. As long as you have the original recovery disks you should be fine!!

I can walk you through replacing it, if you can work in television, you can change a laptop hard drive, just a matter of unscrewing and carefully putting the new on in place!
 
Travis B said:
Chuck, what is the model # of your Vaio. I am a computer parts reseller, and can get you another much larger drive say a 120. As long as you have the original recovery disks you should be fine!!

I can walk you through replacing it, if you can work in television, you can change a laptop hard drive, just a matter of unscrewing and carefully putting the new on in place!
Click to expand...

I will have to find out the number, and I "should" have the recovery discs.... all at home... I am at work now.

Thanks, T.
 
You don't need any restore disk. Just waste of your time with installing or installing all programs.

Get Casper 5.0 cloning software, buy 320GB hard drive (under 100.00), external case (15.00) and be done in less than 30 minutes. Total will be around 200.00 but you will have Casper for future upgrades.

Have a beer and use your old hard drive for backup.
 
The largest 2.5" IDE drives I've seen are 160 gig, and if it's an older Windows machine, it won't be SATA (which can go up to 320, in 2.5", from what I've seen). While Chuck can certainly go larger than 30 Gig, I don't think he can take this machine up to 320 Gig.
 
Steve Sharp said:
The largest 2.5" IDE drives I've seen are 160 gig, and if it's an older Windows machine, it won't be SATA (which can go up to 320, in 2.5", from what I've seen). While Chuck can certainly go larger than 30 Gig, I don't think he can take this machine up to 320 Gig.
Click to expand...


But it could do a 160 drive, right? Casper, I mean.

It's about a 4 year old XP Sony Vaio... maybe 5 years.
 
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=016968&cid=HD.517.139

The largest hard drive for your lappy.

And 320 GB is available with SATA connection only. My mistake.

Papa all you need is IDE/PATA hard drive. Any size should be ok.
Your notebook will be faster as well.

I'm still using casper ver. 4.0 and love it. Much better than ghost.

Just to be on the safe side I would check if your laptop BIOS will recognize large size hard drive.
 
Wow.. PATA 2.5" goes up to 250 now?

How much is $100 Canadian in U.S. dollars?

Yes, make sure your bios will support a drive this large.

With my old Toshiba (now with a 160 Gig), I had to do a TON of updates and service packs on XP, reboot about a million times, and use Partition Magic to get past 132 Gig.

Ghost is made by Norton, and I avoid Norton products. Who makes Casper?
 
It should work fine just add some more memory and you should be good to go.
 
Just go with an external, I use a 500 gig with my laptops (all with 30 gig internal drives) put a small folder of must haves to get a party by on the internal and you are good to go.

Also take a look at the little passport drives they power off of the USB and go up to 320 gigs, these can be velcroed to the top of the laptop lid and are always in place.
 
I love the little Passports -- bought a few of them :)

Only wish they had a port for external power supply, if you should ever need one... So far, I haven't had the need for one, but it would be nice.

I use mine for backups -- they are attached to each computer, and I have True Image do a full partition backup automatically on a schedule. They've made it a lot easier then doing daily DVD backups, as I can easily yank them out in an emergency, and stick them in my pockets.

I also keep a subset of my music library on each one (about 10-15,000 tracks), so all my music is available on each computer.

I likey :)
 
+1 on the Passports. I just got a 160 GB as my first external HD. It's really tiny which is nice I'll probably wind up using it to transport files when I go out of town so I always have my info with me. Anyway its' a really nice little HD. I formatted it the first time I plugged it in because came with software on it for backups.. I don't need no stinkin' software to back my stuff up. :p I actually find myself saving more stuff than I used to because I Don't have to burn it all to DVD for backups.

Anywho on to you PD, I'd suggest the external option only because it's less fuss. Replacing an HD is easy but for the people who aren't technically adept you can run into trouble. Run Ricks app MDIS (My disk is spinning) to keep the external spun up and pile on the music. These Passports aren't much bigger than a deck of cards, it's closer to the size of a small greeting card. You can carry 4 or 5 of them with you easily if need be and swap 'em out as needed.
 
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