I don’t get why the databases on the Denons get corrupted so easily. Sure, you should always dismount your drives before ejecting them, but I’m not sure this is normal. I work with sql databases every day and this does not feel statistical normal to me.
Indeed, I don’t know if a database that Denon recognises as “corrupted” is corrupted at all. I have tried to open “corrupted” databases in SQL browser programs, and they are simply OK.
Also, the message of “Database corrupted, reformat your drive” is misleading to say the least. One thing is the databases files in the Engine Library (there are more than one, what a strange design) are faulty, another is the drive partition to be faulty. Formatting (rebuilding the drive partition) makes sense when the disk is corrupted, but not when the database is corrupted. Indeed, disks with databases that Denon flags as corrupted can perfectly be mounted in a laptop and are operable, hence, there is simply no need to reformat the disk (indeed, as said before even the database looks healthy).
If it helps, it the decks says that the db is corrupted by you can still read the drive in the laptop, I’d recommend to simply delete the “Engine Library” directory, run Engine, and drag all the songs in the drive to Engine, so the Library is built out of the songs in the drive and that way at least you save the time transferring the files from the laptop to the drive (process that Denon calls “packaging”).
To me, the management of the drives in the Prime system looks very unstable and not robust at all. Transferring files to the drive or adding new songs in Engine takes ages for no reason. Search and navigation with big libraries is slower than is should be, databases get corrupted way more that it would look reasonable to me, searching libraries sometimes simply hangs indefinitely, my linked SC5000 sometimes crashes when searching in a linked database…
I suspect the code handling the db stuff and disk access is not as robust as it should be. The rest is fine, but everything related to drive access is not stable enough in my opinion.