Well, it’s not actually so much for playback.

Speed is the most critical feature of USB drives but is usually misunderstood. What to Consider When Buying a USB for DJing?Įxcept for capacity, is there anything else that makes a USB drive ‘better’ than others? Met up with him for a quick beer and received my USB back. One day I forgot one of my USBs at a gig, and a few days later, I got a text from the promoter saying he found my USB at the end of the night. Pro tip: create a notepad file on your SSD/USB named “If found, please contact” and write your name, address, and phone number on it. But if you head to the Pioneer DJs forum, you’ll notice that in May of 2021 (here’s the link), they said they don’t suggest them for use with CDJs and certain XDJs. I also didn’t get on well with Corsair Flash Survivor. It’s KingstonDataTraveler that died on me fully corrupted after about three weeks. There are two USB drives that I’ve had no luck with, and some people do swear by it. He paid $70 for the 256 GB model, but you can check the price on Amazon. I’ve also had the pro version and regular ones, and they’ve been great. The only downside is that they are pretty large, very difficult to lose, and very easy to knock if you’re clumsy.

Pioneer DJ support used to recommend the former model of these, and they are truly like rockets. If you want the ultimate speed from drives, SanDisk Extreme Pro is the one. Maybe even the fastest out there, and very, very affordable. He was put onto those by James Hype and now has five of them. He said it’s extremely fast and that he transferred 550 tracks / 7 GB in like 10 seconds. My brother has a 256 GB drive, and it blazes through 4k songs. SanDisk Extreme ProĬoming from one of the most recommended brands, SanDisk Extreme Pro really does the job. If you’re looking for a USB stick for CDJ or XDJ capable of granting swift execution at a low price, this one has writing speeds of up to 200MB/S (real numbers) and a read speed of up to 300MB per second and is a great choice.

One USB waits on my keyring, and the other on a string attached to the ring that only gets off when I’m able to play. I configure, customize, and create fresh playlists in Rekordbox on the first USB, format the second, and clone the first to the second one before going to gigs. Lightweight, durable, super-fast loading (takes ~3S to load up the stick on insertion, even with 50GB used on each of them in ~50+ playlists), and the hole for stringing a keyring through them is solid steel and doesn’t seem breakable. I’ve used many different ones over the years, but I ordered three of these 128GB steel Samsung Bar Plus drives over the last year, and I’m super happy with them.

USB Stick Number of DJs using it (total of 128) Samsung BAR Plus 34 SanDisk Extreme Pro 40 Corsair Flash Voyager 25 Kingston DataTraveler 17 Samsung FIT Plus 5 Corsair Flash Survivor 7 Samsung BAR Plus I found 128 people discussing USBs for CDJs and Rekordbox. I conducted research online (mostly on Reddit) to see which USB drives DJs mostly use. We’re Testing Pioneer DJ OPUS-QUAD – Here’s the Initial Review Best USB Drives for DJing In this article, I will write about USB drives (and some SSDs) that I know work without any issues and with high speed in Rekordbox and on most if not all, CDJs. Write speed is crucial because if you want to add some last few songs to your set, or somehow your USB drive got unsafely removed, and you want to rewrite it rapidly, every second matters. Reading WAVs to four separate media players doesn’t cap out USB drives (except if you have antique ones). I noticed that young DJs often look at the Read speed of USB sticks, which is not much of a factor you’d think you’d have to concern yourself with. Also, they’re asking me about which SSD to purchase, and I’ve got something to say about that. People are always asking me which USB drives to use for CDJs/Rekordbox.

Pioneer xz 2