No longer able to have my master library on HFS+ Disk

I posted this over on the Facebook group so posting it here now too.

I have a Mac that I use Apple Music to manage my library, this library is stored on an external hard drive formatted as HFS+. From here this is where I managed my library in EP 1.x before syncing it to an internal SSD on my Prime 4.

Previously in EP I could audition/listen to songs from that HFS+ drive on the Mac. I could set cue points etc and that worked well. When using Prime DJ 2.x while I can see the crates and analyse music as before ( it even looks like it might have addressed a long standing bug with accented characters), I am no longer able to load a track on one of the decks to audition/manage it. A dialog is presented saying I can’t load media as it is not an exFat formatted disc.

I imagine if my library was stored internally on the Mac’s main HFS/+ drive this would not be an issues. I can see why this should be an issue now. This drive is never mounted in Prime Hardware, only on the Mac.

From a disc maintenance perspective on a Mac it seems ludicrous to store my Apple Music Library on a non HFS/+ disc. The manual even says HFS/+ discs are a valid option.

Surely this is a bug?

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I have my collection as well on APFS drive, luckily it’s a thunderbolt external which bypasses the USB bus, so it doesn’t throw up the same issue you reported.

If I connect that same drive via USB (it has usb as well) I get same issue as you.

Hope they rethink this decision

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It seems like a super poor decision, almost like they say any disk on the USB bus will be connected to Prime hardware which is simply not accurate. They really need to rectify this.

Hard to believe Denon (@DenonDJ-Australia ) have not recognised this. The document clearly shows as in the first image that HFS, HFS+ and APFS formats as well as exFAT and FAT32 (NTFS too if you are on Windows) should be supported.

Agreed it should support all filesystems as stated, but the document also states:

image

So, we can only hope.

Thats a pretty big whoops going from hey store all your music on your Mac on a HFS+ formatted drive to now not working. It does analyse, it’s just playing the track and setting cue points etc when a track is loaded on a deck. If it can write to the DB for analysis, it seems like a massive omission without anybody calling it out as a expected change of behaviour. I am doing to partition the drive tomorrow tone half HFS+ and half exFAT and see if it can be managed in my workflow. The other option is I buy a Thunderbolt drive which is not an ideal expense.

There is also not a lot of thunderbolt drive on offer.

I’m still using my old LaCie rugged thunderbolt 2 drive - swapped the hd for ssd

Otherwise I guess I will be SOL as well.

I have tried using ExFat for my external storage but just don’t like it. It’s slower to access than HFS or APFS on Macs

Yeah it would seem a massive step backwards to have a mass storage device using a non native filesystem. I am sure there are a few other Mac’s around here if it isn’t in fact the dominant OS :wink: I wonder if I can find one of those enclosures about. I am using a spinning HD as it’s not so important the speed but mores having tools to remedy and disk issues through Disk Utility with confidence, and for that I would rather be on one of the native filesystems. Was it tricky to swap the drive out?

It was straightforward process.

There are few videos on YouTube.

This is the exact one I have

I use it with the Apple TB dongle

Just ordered a 1TB version @mufasa. They seem to be getting harder to get at a reasonable price with people asking outrageous money. 1TB will get me out of the woods for now. I’ll swap it out with a 2TB SSD down the track a little. Annoying having to go through this process when it previously worked. Hoping it arrives by the weekend. Extra long weekend this week so keen to give 2.0 a go. Thanx for the heads ip to the probable (for now) solution.

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Luckily I already have a TB 2 → 3 adapter laying about.

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great.

they are discontinued… thats why.

i think i may have to get another one just for back up…incase anything happens to the one i have currently.

Not a bad idea

Just following up on this @mufasa, I received the drive and It does indeed work on Thunderbolt. I guess due to the fact that it’s on the PCIe bus it “thinks” it is internal to the Mac. The disk speed on it is horrible though. Was hoping I could put up with it for the time being but I think my patience will wear thin on it, Time to shop for an SSD and follow the vid you posted :slight_smile: Thanks again though for calling out the solution (that should not be required in the first place unfortunately)

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I think it comes with a 5400rpm hdd…a diy SSD swap out is definitely recommended.

has the problem been solved? what is the solution?

They haven’t even acknowledged that it is a “problem”…my guess is this is a new “feature”, lol!! I’m still shocked that someone on the dev team and/or management thought this was acceptable.

The only current solution is to buy a new thunderbolt based disk. Thanx Denon, failing some VERY basic use cases.

So far Denon DJ was going in the right directions but this one is unbelievable stupid.

I hope they will put this on top of the list to fix :slight_smile:

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Hi! Yeah I updated to engine dj and it’s unbelievably stupid. I store my master library on an external drive and ExFat is not a viable option because it is a bad filesystem, it is not journaled which increases the risk of data loss compared to apfs or hfs 1000%. So I am forced to use rekordbox & rekordbox thumb drives for now. It also baffles me how denon can make such great strides but then screw up some vital things this bad, especially since engine prime used to be able to read and write to my hfs drive!

I basically only registered an account to comment on this. That’s how much of a mistake I think this is from denon devs.

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