Just converting over to Engine Prime form Rekordbox. I previously used an external harddrive on Windows 10 (NTFS) where i stored all my music. I want to convert over my Rekordbox library, but Engine Prime will not read my external hard drive. I realize that a usb should be fat32, as was the case with Rekordbox, but Engine prime cannot read my main external library?
Use ExFaT for your prime drive (the drive you are exporting to)
I may be wrong but Engine prime on your PC should read the ntfs external , you may get a warning telling you to Format the drive just dismiss it
You should still see your songs etc and add to collection.
This was my experience with the HFS formatted external drive on MacOS I just dismiss the warning and i can use the external to add music to my collection and to export
This was fixed for HFS formatted removable (=external) physical drives. But they still would have need to be MBR partitioned for the most reliable results.
I’ve seen multiple reports of Engine Prime not reading tracks from NFS removable drives, since it is also still an issue with server/cloud volumes.
But like @mufasa I’m not a Windows user so I can’t fully confirm this.
tho the stream is MacOS centered the info in the stream applies to both MacOS and Windows versions of the Prime Ecosystem.
What @djteiga could try is to create a crate in EP and drag 'n drop some tracks in that crate straight from the external using the Windows explorer screen. It may not be unlikely that this is an issue for EP’s build in conversions but not for EP’s main database reading. Since OP says his “collection” is on the drive, I would like to know “what software is holding the main collection?”.
If this works, quit Engine Prime and start it up again see if that test crate with it’s content survived the restart of EP.
It shows my hard drive in the drive column but it’s red and you cannot click into it to access files unfortunately. I’m surprised prime cannot read ntfs.
Thanks for the response.
Thanks I will create a bug report. Although I think I’ll have to do what you recommended, guess I’ll need another external hard drive. Question - Do I need a cloning software as you described, cannot just transfer one drive to the other?
A cloning software will make your life easier. Even for incremental backing up.
Eg
When you start using the ExFat as your main drive it will increase in size, then you may want to back up that drive to your old NTFS, instead of copying everything over the cloning software will just update the NTFS with recent changes saving you time.
I’m a Mac user and I use carbon copy cloner. I’m sure there are equivalent ones for Windows as well.
What size is the NTFS drive?
One of the the benefits of using ExFat with Engine prime as your main collection drive is that you can equally plug that complete collection drive to any of the prime players and it will read your Engine prime crates etc easily.
So if you have a small set, export a crate to small thumb drive, but if you have a wedding plug in the entire collection drive.
Clone copies everything. It’s a mirror image basically, including hidden files which you may not see if you choose to do a drag and drop from old to new drive.
That’s my thinking
And yes that clone should still be accessible by both rekordbox and Engine prime, only difference will be the filesystem NTFS and ExFat
For example I have 5 clones of my main drive 4TB
I have 2 ExFat, 3 HFS.
At some point I even had a clone to NTFS to window proof myself incase all my MacBooks are taken aliens
If you have the means will buy a 1tb or 2TB SSD for the ExFat job and use the mechanical HDD external for back up of the SSD.
Important! your new drive should have the same letter designated to it as your current drive. Rekordbox’s filepaths are pointing to that particular drive letter and those filepaths are static.