Make a back up before you try this but you should be able to go to the files tab and drag and drop the folder/file from the old location to a new location and choose move from the dialog that pops up. I know this works with exporting crates and it might work in this manner too. Worth a shot

Mmmm... I can't figure out exactly what you mean there. The problem is that there are crates with the same name, but different contents. Somehow SDJ and Itch can read all the crates in all the different drives, and put them together as one in the Serato browser during startup.

But Windows can't do that, and as far as I know there's no utility for this included with Serato.

The folders work by keeping a reference to all the files within in that drive and combining all the folders and their crate references to form one library.

serato.com

In session 2 of that page he talks about exporting crates to a USB drive. I wonder if you can do the same thing with serato but do it with files instead of crates under the files tab within serato.

If you have 1 crate containing music from multiple drive letters, EACH drive will have a crate folder with the same name. Each crate will only have the titles that are on the same drive.

Exception: Smartcrates are always stored on the local drive.

If you use Serato to MOVE the contents to one drive, Serato will delete the crates where there is no longer a song on that particular drive.

For example, If you have songs on C:, D:, and E: in the same crate and MOVE everything to drive F:, Serato will remove those crates on C, D, and E

Thanks for trying to help guys. I've been working with this for hours. Still haven't found what I'd call a workable solution. My main concern is to get this done with out screwing up my playlist crates, which unfortunately have tracks included within from all the different drives.

not sure what you are trying to do...

Serato has a nice COPY or MOVE feature if you care to use it.

Well, for me, it's like trying to pick up a needle with gloves on. This software is so awkward. No left-click browser functions...

I'm trying to get all my tracks onto one drive, without screwing up my playlist crates. But when I try to relocate my (relocated) files, SDJ, the "professional" software that it is... as I've finally just come to expect, just crashes every time.

Yeah... I meant 'right' click.

Have you tried the method that I suggested earlier? It might be worth a shot

I did. I've tried just about everything.

I think I could get it worked out, if only I could get Serato to find the related files without crashing.

I wish I had a dollar for every hour I've spent on forums, and working around DJ software inadequacies over the last 14 years. I could probably afford another new Corvette...

In Serato Go to Files and drag the folders from the old location to the new location. You will be prompted to COPY or MOVE. Also, check the box that says Remove Old References...

All of the crates and playlists will update the database and crates to the new location with the exception of the History crate.

I do this all the time moving stuff from internal to external.

Tracy, I appreciate you trying to help me out, but some expert from Serato needs to make themselves useful here.

I've already tried everything you've suggested. For instance; if I attempt what you describe above, I get nothing at all. The files are already copied, and SDJ can see that, so it just doesn't respond, period. Windows file manager would at least try to move them, and update any inconsistencies, but Serato does nothing.

I don't want to erase them and start over, because on that one drive alone, there is over one terabyte of audio and video, and that takes a long time to deal with. Plus, I don't want to delete the Serato database references, because I will want to swap that drive back in or use it on my laptop at some point.

I just reread your first post and assuming the _Serato_ folder you copied to the new internal was in the root directory of the drive it should automatically detect the new songs and the only problem you may have is the tracks doubling when the external is plugged in. If all those conditions are true but it isn't recognizing the new drive definitely hit up support and investigate that as it seems the software is not behaving as designed.

Yes. It did detect the drive and it's contents, however it sees the tracks as being "new", not just a mirror of the other drive. The problem being that if I disconnect the old external drive, over half the tracks in my playlists disappear from their crates, and the "relocate" function crashes the program.

If by new you mean that they aren't in any of the crates they're supposed to be in that's weird. The only thing that I can think happened is that the databaseV2 file uses absolute file paths for the songs and like you suggested earlier its looking into the wrong Drive/Letter. Would be an odd way for them to implement it seeing as how they put a _Serato_ folder on each drive in the root directory. Should be able to use all relative file paths.

Definitely need someone from Serato to chime in as to how the databaseV2 file actually references audio files. Did you open a support ticket? If you did perhaps you can ask them about that.

.
I know they are monitoring this conversation. I was hoping they would save me that trouble

good luck with that

You officially have a mess my friend.

I did some digging into the database V2 folder and figured out that the file paths within are relative so as long as the file structure from the external drive is the same as it was on the internal drive there shouldn't be any problems.

yes this is correct but don't forget drive lettering, if everything looks right but a reference to c:/user/music is d:/user/music it wont work so also take that into consideration as you seem to have the gist of how it works

I know that's what I'm saying. The file paths don't include the drive letter. Everything is with respect to the location of the _Serato_ folder

Apparently there used to be only "_ScratchLive_" folders. One on each drive, with all the global crates included.

But now, we have "_Serato_" folders. All the crates are on the C: drive, and maybe external drives also? Then there is a "database v2" file in each Serato folder, on each and every drive, which lists the tracks available on that particular drive.

When I copied the external drive to the new internal, the whole scratchlive and serato folders were copied along with everything else. But, when I fired up SDJ, and it loaded the database, it emptied the old copied Serato folder of it's crates, and completely rewrote the v2 file. The old drive had a v2 file also, but it only contained tracks that were not in the crate files...

Here are examples of the v2 files, vs. the crate files: ("( H ) F r e e A g e n t" is a directory, not a real drive, in this database address)

v2 from new drive:
vrsn @ 2 . 0 / S e r a t o S c r a t c h L I V E D a t a b a s eotrk (ttyp w a v epfil V ( H ) F r e e A g e n t / S t u f f / M u s i c / I f I C a n _ t H a v e Y o u - Y v o n n e E l l i m a n - H Q ( O r i g i n a l ) . m p 4tbpm 0 . 0 0tadd 1 4 2 4 9 1 0 4 7 5uadd Tîh‹ulbl ÿÿÿsbav bhrt bmis bply blop bitu bovc bcrt biro bwlb bwll buns bbgl otrk Šttyp w a v epfil ¸

Crate file from old drive:
vrsn 8 1 . 0 / S e r a t o S c r a t c h L i v e C r a t eosrt tvcn b p mbrev ovct tvcn %Ïtvcw 0ovct tvcn #tvcw 3 1ovct tvcn s o n gtvcw 1 5 6ovct "tvcn a r t i s ttvcw 1 8 5ovct tvcn b p mtvcw 0ovct tvcn l e n g t htvcw 8 0ovct $tvcn c o m m e n ttvcw 2 5 0ovct tvcn
a l b u mtvcw 2 5 0otrk šptrk ’ S t u f f / M u s i c / U n s o r t e d - F i l e d A l p h a b e t i c a l l y / F / F u n k a d e l i c - F l a s h l i g h t . m p 3otrk šptrk ’

Related question. I recently added a second internal HDD to my MacBook in place of the optical drive. I then 'moved' my (user's) home folder to the second (non-booting) drive according to this guide: macs.about.com

Serato DJ was able to find my crates, but not the files themselves. Why is this? Does the software search everywhere for the crates? For the files, it's still looking in /Users/..., where they obviously don't exist anymore. Would it help to move the whole /Users folder or would SDJ still look for the files in the system drive?

From my experience, if you move a crate and it's track/files to another drive with your file manager, Serato is pretty clueless about where those files that belong in there have gone to.

If you use the file utility in Serato to do the job, it will take care of all the internal addressing for you, and the crates will work normally.

On the other-hand, I had had some very weird results from using the Serato utility. Like files that show up in my regular file manager that cannot be played or deleted, or sometimes they will play, but you cannot delete or move them.

^^^If you had that issue with the move utility its usually because there was something weird with the file like the filename somehow had a space character at the end of the filename. The file actually had a problem already. It happened to me also and I had to do a force delete from the OS and then delete it from the library.

I use that Serato move utility all the time and it is a real life saver. I never manually move and Serato folders and crates anymore. The software does the job really well.

Just a question, and it may not matter at this point. But.. I clone my drives all the time ( making an exact copy bit for bit ), and I have 1 master drive to clone from and all changes are represented on the other drives. I don't seem to have any issues - windows or mac. Just for clarification, I have the driver installed on my windows pc so it can read the mac file system.

I have been using Serato software since SL 1.6. I to have issues but for the most part my experience has been positive. But i have had issues with support not being to identify and correct a problem i was experiencing. I had to solve it myself through trial and error, that was quite frustrating.

I also can't wait for the day Serato can manage / monitor a library's changes without the users input.

file utility / move utility, what are you guys even talking about?

Click on the "Files" tab, just above your track browser. It's a little to the right of center screen, if I recall correctly. Opens up Serato's little mini file manager menu.