External SSD Using Apple APFS

Hi there,

So I’m using a Mac Book pro, which has an internal SSD drive formatted using the latest file system from Apple, which is of type APFS. When firing up Engine Prime, I can drag and drop music files stored on this drive into my collection. When on earth then will Engine Prime not recognise an external SSD formatted in the same APFS format as a Device?

Both Serato and the Rekordbox 6 have no problems what so ever using the drive in this format!

Looking past the mixed metaphor of when / where , what do you mean?

Hi DJ_Didi,

I don’t understand why Engine Prime doesn’t allow me to use an external device formatted in APFS format. The main SSD drive on my MAC, which all collections, playlists etc use is formatted using the same format. So, why do i receive an error message when Engine Prime reads my Devices?

your problem is that it’s a removable drive. They get a special treatment in Engine Prime.

So it would seem @MixMasterG_ATGR.nl

It’s also likely that Apple charge fees for companies to interact with apples own developed formats. Like mp3 encoders used to be chargeable and some hard drive formats were free to read from but chargeable to write to.

Your external device with Apple file system cannot be read by a player, therefore it will give an error.

It could be a more intelligent error like “if you’re going to use this external drive for a Prime device, you should format it differently”, but for now it isn’t.

should be an error when you fire up EP, that the drive XXX is not compatible with Prime because it’s not formatted FAT or ExFAT. But I’m not 100% this pops up for all problematic storage locations

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@DJ_Didi Apple charging fees… surely not! Either way, when plugged into Serato and Rekordbox there are no problems. I guess this is because the laptop is being used in conjunction with a controller.

That would be what my guess is too. Apple will obviously let apple mac OS work with apple disk formats and Microsoft probably wants Windows to give users no reason to buy a Mac , so probably paid apple “whatever” to have that format recognised.

For denon, there’s probably not enough DJs who have encountered that format, and who can’t use a wider available format, to make it worthwhile

@MixMasterG_ATGR You are amazing. Thnk you for all your wisdom