SATA Hard Drive installation / access

How do I get my music to the sata drive once mounted inside the Prime 4?? I have packed and added music to a flash drive in the USB slot, but see no way to MOVE the music to the sata drive… PLEASE HELP

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Hi and welcome on the forum! Pardon me for being blunt sometimes.

Did you have a look at the manual and FAQ for Prime4. There’s lots of useful information to start jamming:

https://www.denondj.com/kb/denon-dj-prime-4-frequently-asked-questions/#transfer

Also take a look at the different topics via a search on the forum. Other users might have reported the same issue, for instance:

Move Or Copy Music Between Multiple Media Sources

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I know. It’s ridiculous isn’t it? A “standalone DJ system” that works without requiring a computer…but it needs a computer to load files onto the internal drive.

People requested the ability to load tracks onto the HDD from flash drives some months ago, but despite Denon holding back on shipping the units in order to update the firmware, this essential functionality has not been added.

The ability to move music to connected sources is not an easy task. Certainly not one that could be accomplished in a matter of a month.

PRIME 4 is the most capable DJ product ever brought to market. I’m not sure why you’re consistently knocking the product. Do you know other standalone DJ hardware that can move files between sources?

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Hi there got my prime 4 today… Yay… but after watching all and I do mean all the YouTube vids with the guys visiting different stores and giving a demo, you all state that the p4 can format an ssd drive within the unit, well I’ve installed the brand new ssd in and at first my laptop would recognise it but then it did but the engine prime software wouldn’t show the ssd as a device or drive to allow me to move my music (which is already analized and in crates and play lists from EP to the unit… Any help would be appreciated

First thanks for the help guys! I installed and after the advice did these steps…

  1. right clicked on MY PC.
  2. clicked on MANAGE
  3. Then, device storage/drives
  4. the drive I installed said that it was not allocated…
  5. after clicking around, I allocated and formatted to exFAT … and as a SINGLE drive, no partitioning… and NAMED / ASSIGNED “LETTER/NAME” to the drive…
  6. drive then showed as a regular drive!!!
  7. opened prime and started the PACKING process to the internal data drive…
    BY THE WAY, I AM USING A 2 TB !!

Hi there! Successfully installed a 250 GB ssd samsung hard disk. I formatted it with a mac in “ex fat” format by setting my Prime 4 in controller mode. Very easy and fast!

Here’s what I did: Been playing on Engine Prime platform for about 2 years now (SC5000s and X1800), so I have a 512GB thumb drive with all my songs and database on it, with data like loops, cuepoints, crates and playlists. I bought a USB 3.0 to Sata adapter and simply copied the folder structure from the thumbdrive to the Sata drive (after formatting fat32, naming the drive, etc.). I have nearly 20K files on the drive and it only took about 2 hours via a PC with USB 3.0 ports. Plugged it in and it works great.

Why I’m here on the forum today is that I just played on it for the first time this way and I’m used to “ejecting” the drive to save data. The Prime 4 won’t let me eject the sata drive. I’m worried about turning it off, not really to save the data from the set I just played in my garage, but because not ejecting drives when powering down can corrupt the database. Any ideas here?

JWiLL certainly you know by now that no matter how awesome a product is that there will always be those with the uncontrollable urge to knock it.

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It stores the information in the same way. All the changes you do to track,(cues, loops and so on) is saved when you change the track( in other words ejecting the track) and as you turn p4 off it will write all the information to the database.

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Believe me I don’t want to knock it. I’ve owned plenty of Denon kit in the past (back to their twin CD rack mount units) and it’s been great.

However, when there are obvious flaws in the product (like missing functionality that should have been there since day one) then I feel it’s only fair to mention them.

This thing’s been doing the rounds of trade shows, DJ meets etc for months. I find it hard to believe not one DJ has asked about copying files from flash to HDD in all that time.

Prior to that, when it was being designed by Denon, did no staff pick up on it either? Seems an obvious omission to me.

I don’t know what Denon’s reasoning is for not having this as a feature but I suspect that in some countries being able to easily copy between sources could create legal problems. Here in Canada the governing body for dj’s and their music is Connect (formerly AVLA). We are required to purchase our music from a licensed supplier (I use ERG) and also to pay for a hard drive license to legally have the music on a hard drive and play at an event. When I download my files from ERG they are watermarked and apparently (according to ERG) can be traced back to me. I’m very careful to be sure my music stays on my computer and drives only. Point is I don’t want it to be easy for someone to transfer files to or from my gear. Simply plugging in a stick and snatching up files, although convenient, sounds like a legal can of worms to me. You’re right, I’m certain it’s come up at some point. Perhaps it was dismissed as simply being too slippery a slope to tread down for legal reasons.

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Hmmm…

Denon have told us there’s a “powerful processor” in the Prime 4 so it’s effectively a computer. Considering pretty much any modern computer can freely copy files from flash drives to the internal HDD, I don’t see the issue.

Surely you need to use a PC or MAC to get the files onto a USB or SD Card in the first place before moving them to the internal Sata? So why not cut that step out and use the USB connection to load direct onto the internal Sata Drive? Seems too simple, because it is!

If it’s your flash drive, yes, but if you would take your computer to a friend and he/she loads songs on your computer, it’s illegal.

Anyway, it would be nice to have the possibility to copy music between storage.

The fun thing here is that everyone asks for this feature for the Prime4, but no one asked for this when the SC’s came out…

Imagine an SC in a flight case with a drive connected on the back; simply tucked away. Not 1 request was made to copy music from the front ports to the back port drive that’s tucked away.

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Thank you, DJColdfield - I learned this when I did in fact turn it off. Pretty slick.

Totally agree with you.

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But it’s not the computer’s ability to do it that’s illegal. It’s the person’s actions.

The SC’s don’t (can’t) have internal hard drives. If they had, like the HS5500s, I probably would have bought them.

Reading is definitely a problem. All fine.

That’s true, but with the streaming services that are coming soon (Beatport in particular) it could have been a condition of those agreements that copying between sources was not possible, to prevent anyone recording the stream, and then saving it to the HDD. Would make sense then why they aren’t allowing it, as commercially it would ruin a massive new feature that is coming.

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