Best external drives for your music production and DJing libraries

One of the most important things to consider when producing music and DJing is looking after your computer and resources. It is essential to keep the disk that the operating system is on as clean as possible for maximum speed.

For this reason, using an external hard drive for your music and sample libraries means that you have a cleaner system, with the added benefit, that you can take your production anywhere.

I recommend you use a dedicated hard drive for all your creative projects because it allows you to keep all you samples organised and portable.

My setup involves all my software, such as Ableton Live, installed on my fast NVMe C drive, but the cost of such a fast SSD in my system comes with a compromise – storage capacity. For that reason, all my sample libraries, as well as Native Instruments libraries and Ableton Packs, are stored on my external 4TB portable hard drive.

This guide will cover some of the best external hard drives on the market today, with the important considerations of speed, value, raw capacity, and portability.

It is important to note that Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) are much cheaper than SSDs but are much more vulnerable to bumps and data loss with vibration. SSDs on the other hand are more expensive, but with no moving parts, they are more durable.

Another trade-off with SSDs is that they have a limited write performance. This means if you constantly replace the data on them, they can degrade. Since we are talking about static libraries which are saved on drives more or less permanently, this isn’t a big issue.

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Seagate Backup Plus Hub USB 3.0

This range of external drive is great with offerings of 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, and 10TB.

At a price of around £17 per TB when comparing the 6TB and 8TB models, you are getting a really good value hard drive.

One of the key features which sets this particular range aside is the additional USB ports on the front, meaning it doubles as USB hub. For many DJs and producers, additional USB inputs to their computer is a must.

The drives also come packaged with Seagate’s backup software and with such a huge amount of storage available, the drive will easily work as a backup device in case your PC gets damaged or corrupted.

Plugable 1TB Thunderbolt 3 External SSD NVMe Drive

If you want the fastest speeds available, a good place to start is a Thunderbolt 3 drive. This drive combines the USB-crushing speeds of Thunderbolt 3 with an NVMe SSD inside. This means it is one of the quickest external drives on the market, and is also super compact.

You pay a premium for the SSD technology and will need to make sure your computer has Thunderbolt 3 ports, but its solid-state design means it can handle much more vibration and bumps compared to traditional HDDs.

SanDisk Ultra Fit

While these aren’t hard drives, these deserve a mention for their sheer compactness.

The SanDisk UltraFit series of USB sticks are about as small as USB drives go. You don’t have to be old to remember a time USB sticks were limited to only a few GBs of storage, but these incredible designs go up to half a terabyte in a thumbnail-sized footprint.

They are USB 3 so they run more than fast enough for DJs and production samples and on a price-per-gigabyte scale they are extremely cheap compared to only a few years ago.

While you won’t be able to fit terabytes of samples on them, the higher capacity models have more than enough storage for most DJs and producers. They also work great for producers who want a spare location for their favourite samples, but don’t want to carry their whole library with them.

Silicon Power Rugged Armor A60

For those who travel a lot, or people prone to spilling their drinks on their hardware, the Silicon Power Armor series has your back.

These external drives are “Military-grade” and designed to take a beating. The product meets “US Military (MIL-STD-810G) drop protection standards” and while that doesn’t mean you can use it as a spare ping-pong paddle when it’s not being used, it offers an additional peace of mind.