External Harddrive

[djteiga]

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?

Please Help? Thanks.

[mufasa]

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

I may be misinformed but @MixMasterG_ATGR.nl may be able to say more.

[MixMasterG_ATGR.nl]

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.

I mentioned it here (link starts at the correct time in the stream) Ask Me Anything Denon Prime Special collection management and conversion for DJ’s

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.

[djteiga]

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.

[mufasa]

Time to start a request for it then.

Or a bug report

I had to alert them as well when I first started using Engine Prime and it did not work with my serato hfs external drive

HFS Formatted External Hard Drive questions for Library

Any plans to support HFS formatted external hard drives? I previously had a HFS formatted Lacie Rugged 2TB Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 External HD which worked with both Engine Prime and Serato DJ, I have since run out of space on that external HD and bought a USB 3.0 4TB G-Drive External HD. [I do both audio and video gigs] I prefer to format my external HD in the native file format of whatever system i’m using which in my case in HFS for Macs. My entire Serato Library is on this new HFS 4TB and it …

Rekordbox can read that drive correct?

If you don’t want to wait, the workaround will be using a cloning software to clone the NTFS to a ExFat drive of similar size.

Rekordbox and Engine prime can read that.

Then keep the NTFS for backing up.

Use the new ExFat as your DJ drive.

But still go ahead and create a bug report

[djteiga]

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?

[mufasa]

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.

[djteiga]

1TB External Drive. I’m just hoping once I clone, I can still import all my Rekordbox crates/playlists.

Thanks again.

[mufasa]

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.

[MixMasterG_ATGR.nl]

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.

[djteiga]

Thanks Gents, got it working. Now just got to get used to Prime software.