SATA drive bay - supported sizes?

fabriknos · April 4, 2019, 10:27am

Will the onboard SATA drive bay support 15mm drive size? For those extra large capacity 2.5" hard drives, i.e. the 5TB Seagate.

Engell · April 4, 2019, 10:44am

(I cant give you a correct answer for that, but have in mind that as for now they only recommend 1 tb HDs) Just so you afterwards dont complain that the 5tb aint working

Jay_DenonDJ · April 4, 2019, 12:56pm

Hi @fabriknos, I’m afraid this won’t fit.

Regards, Jay

fabriknos · April 4, 2019, 2:40pm

That’s too bad. Can you specify what size drives will fit (i.e. 12mm, 9mm, 7.5mm), and what maximum storage capacity the SATA controller will recognize?

Also if the onboard SATA slot wont recognize large drives, will the USB ports support reading larger drives?

The idea is having my entire music collection available on the P4, whether that’s internal (ideal) or external.

S_Anderson · April 4, 2019, 3:09pm

External then physical size of the drive doesn’t matter

fabriknos · April 4, 2019, 4:03pm

Are you sure? While the external drive would be connecting to a USB bus instead of directly to a SATA controller, wouldn’t you still need a SATA driver to mount and read that drive, and wouldn’t that driver need to be 64-bit to read drives larger than 2TB (just remembering from the old Windows 7 days when you needed a fix for large drives). If the P4’s software is 64-bit then should be fine.

Also, does every drive - both internal and external - need to be formatted FAT32? I saw that in another thread here but that was specific to the internal drive. Is that true for externals as well? No NTFS, HFS, APFS or EXT4 support?

Shain · April 4, 2019, 5:30pm

I think it would be a safe bet to say it will be the same as the SC5000/M players. I personally have not tested any of these except for exFAT.

Here is what the manual for the SC5000 says on page 6:

Supported file systems: exFAT, FAT32 (recommended), HFS+ (read-only), NTFS (read-only)"

fabriknos · April 4, 2019, 5:59pm

Cool thanks Shain. I guess the question becomes does the P4 need write permissions to the hard drive to save metadata information back to it (key, cue points, etc.), or does that information live in a database that can be stored on the internal SATA drive? In which case you could use your Apple-formatted external drives in read-only mode… hmmm interesting.

Jay_DenonDJ · April 5, 2019, 10:53am

Hi all,

I’m able to answer a few questions for you now:

Prime 4 (and all Prime hardware) supports Fat 32 and exFat, we recommend exFat
The files size limit is based on the file system used
We recommend using a maximum 1TB Solid State drive for the best performance.

In regards to the size of the drive, I’ll get this info to you ASAP.

Thanks J

fabriknos · April 5, 2019, 6:07pm

Thanks J! Sorry for all the questions, but this SATA capability is the #1 reason I am buying a Prime 4 so I want to make sure I cover all the bases. Beyond the physical size question, could you also investigate these:

Is 1TB going to the max supported capacity for the onboard SATA slot?
Does the P4 have some other built-in storage that runs the Engine software or does it run off the onboard SATA drive?
Where does track information such as cue points, BPM, key, etc. get stored - back to the hard drive the music is on, the SATA drive, or to some other internal memory?

Reese · April 5, 2019, 6:27pm

You could find all answers yourself, but here you go:

No. (It’s just what they tested to work for now. Just like the statement “Use SSD instead of HDD”)
Yes; No. (You don’t have to add an internal drive for it to work. Software builtin, database+media on drives)
On the drive where you load your music from.

Engell · April 5, 2019, 6:31pm

Watch some of all the vids…

Jay_DenonDJ · April 8, 2019, 7:59am

Hi @fabriknos, please see below:

1 - a 1TB SSD HD is the max we’re currently recommending

2 - The OS runs on an internal drive separate from the SATA, the SATA Bay is just for additional music (like the 4 USB & SD card slots)

3 - Back to the drive you are playing from.

I hope this helps.

Regards

Jay

RAO.DJ · April 8, 2019, 9:12am

Jay, can u shed some Light on how playlist alterations or creations get synced back from the used drive back into engine prime?

Reese · April 8, 2019, 10:47am

Thanks for the copy response!

S_Anderson · April 8, 2019, 4:55pm

Just following this as I’m hoping to see (soon to be) fellow Prime 4 owners reporting great performance with 2tb drives or higher as my collection is at over 1.5 tb already and growing - I’ll be using mine externally though

JWiLL · April 9, 2019, 3:32pm

Hi @RAO.DJ, All Crate and Playlist creations live on the drive they are created on. Syncing device (USB/SD) Crates and Playlists to Engine Prime (PC/Mac) is currently only possible by manual process. This is something we are looking to improve in a future update with an all encompassing Sync Manager tool.

You can however, sync back all performance data such as beat grids, hotcues, and loops by clicking the sync icon on the device tab in Engine Prime.

JWiLL · April 9, 2019, 3:37pm

Hi @S_Anderson, Prime 4 will read drives larger than 1TB but we recommend and support up to 1TB. Our test cases have proven 1TB and less to give best experience. Note, the drive will perform better if the drive is used internally (SATA) rather than externally (USB).

hellnegative · April 9, 2019, 6:08pm

If it’s the same controller as the MPC Live, we have used a 3TB drive in the MPC Live without issues.

RAO.DJ · April 9, 2019, 7:18pm

Thanks so much for your reply. So it will be same as history is now? And when said synctool is available does that mean a sort of relocate file like in traktor will be in place?