Rebentisch
Hi there, I am using VDJ with my M1 Mac, but the freezing happened before. I am using a big external hard drive (SSD, but it happened with older drives as well). When I do a search, sometimes it does not work, the hard drive blinks all the time, like a search is in progress or the drive is reading something, and it blocks f.e. 30 minutes... I can play a song that is in the actual list, I can change the side lists etc. an chose a song from there, but I cannot change the folders on the left side or do another search, till the "search" is over and the hard drive is not in use any more. The device has the exFat System an I already chose to deactivate the spotlight indexing. I don't know what I can do more... Any ideas very much appreciated! Matthias
Posted Mon 30 Aug 21 @ 7:46 pm
wickedmix
Many external drives like to go into power saving after a short time. I'm not a Mac guy so I really don't know how to disable it in Mac os. Some drives come with a utility program to adjust the setting. Worth taking a look at anyways.
Posted Tue 31 Aug 21 @ 12:27 pm
PhantomDeejay
MAC's don't like drive disconnections without "Ejecting" them first.
When that happens, your MAC may need a lot of time until it checks and prepares the hard drive to be used again.
So far, that shouldn't be news to any MAC user, and this does not have anything to do with VirtualDJ.
However, it has to do with self powered external drives that are powered from the USB bus.
In general, it is possible that when a drive tries to operate after long periods of inactivity to create a power draw peak. Usually this peak is under the maximum draw that USB port can offer. However if you use a non-powered USB hub, it is possible that this peak among with some other device drawing power to exceed the peak of USB and therefore cause the drive to briefly disconnect.
That's usually when the forthmentioned problem occurs..
Of course mechanical drives are more likely to cause such issues from SSDs due to the fact that the have to spin their surface and needles in order to operate. However that doesn't exclude SSDs from suffering the same issue. It's just not common enough for a SSD to behave like this.
Finally: When VirtualDJ does a search, it actually searches it's own database, not the drive itself. Therefore performing a search should NOT have any effect on your drive usage.
There's only one catch though: If you have "File Date" column visible on your search results list, then VirtualDJ will try to read the file date for all the search results it displays. "File Date" is not stored in the database.
So, in this case, once you search for something and you have let's say 500 results, VirtualDJ will ask from the drive to provide the file dates of all those files. As you can imagine, that's something that dramatically increases drive usage.
So, if you have "File Date" column visible under search results, turn it off!
When that happens, your MAC may need a lot of time until it checks and prepares the hard drive to be used again.
So far, that shouldn't be news to any MAC user, and this does not have anything to do with VirtualDJ.
However, it has to do with self powered external drives that are powered from the USB bus.
In general, it is possible that when a drive tries to operate after long periods of inactivity to create a power draw peak. Usually this peak is under the maximum draw that USB port can offer. However if you use a non-powered USB hub, it is possible that this peak among with some other device drawing power to exceed the peak of USB and therefore cause the drive to briefly disconnect.
That's usually when the forthmentioned problem occurs..
Of course mechanical drives are more likely to cause such issues from SSDs due to the fact that the have to spin their surface and needles in order to operate. However that doesn't exclude SSDs from suffering the same issue. It's just not common enough for a SSD to behave like this.
Finally: When VirtualDJ does a search, it actually searches it's own database, not the drive itself. Therefore performing a search should NOT have any effect on your drive usage.
There's only one catch though: If you have "File Date" column visible on your search results list, then VirtualDJ will try to read the file date for all the search results it displays. "File Date" is not stored in the database.
So, in this case, once you search for something and you have let's say 500 results, VirtualDJ will ask from the drive to provide the file dates of all those files. As you can imagine, that's something that dramatically increases drive usage.
So, if you have "File Date" column visible under search results, turn it off!
Posted Tue 31 Aug 21 @ 12:51 pm
Rebentisch
I will try to "uncheck" file date. If this is the solution, I will tell here. I have two gigs this weekend... Thank you!
This night I added the hard drive to the database to make sure, the data is correct. The first search this morning had the same unwanted effect. Now I unchecked the file date and will see, if it works fine... I will tell...
This night I added the hard drive to the database to make sure, the data is correct. The first search this morning had the same unwanted effect. Now I unchecked the file date and will see, if it works fine... I will tell...
Posted Wed 01 Sep 21 @ 6:52 am