I have been using Serato since late 2004 / early 2005 (ScratchLive) then Serato Itch, Serato Dj and finally SDJ Pro. We can actually have errors, either because the version of the iDtag is too old (well privilege iDtag v2.2 mini or v2.3 recommended) or either it was because of a bad encoding compression rate too high, it is also highly recommended to rip CDs or vinyls with constant “CBR” encoding and not “VBR”. Thanks to that and if you respect it … the database which is X or Y it will already be more stable, allowing to minimize the risks of a corrupted data. There can also be concerns because of OS updates either by what was interrupted or by what it was already bugged, weakening the operating system registry and suddenly we will have an application that may be weakened in terms of performance and stability. But, it has utilities to correct this kind of problem and if the utilities don’t help … unfortunately, a clean-install will be necessary.
17 years of Serato and zero “I’m touching wood” problem (except HDD disks which were sensitive to Electric variation and static electricity and vibrations but that was before the sharp drop in SSDs make the purchase much more accessible ). Computing is sometimes capricious.
However, I advise to rebuild the structure of the DATA of Serato (even if it means starting from scratch for the creation of our library), when there are major updates of the software! Because indeed, the data evolves occasionally. As for example between 1.9.8 SDJ and version 2 of Serato Dj Pro, it was highly recommended.