Storing Stems on Removable Drive Solution

Engine DJ Software Engine DJ (Mac & PC)
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1

I found a workaround for those who store their library on the internal computer drive but only want to render stam files on their external drive (Thumb Drive), to save storage space on the computer.

  1. Sync your library to your external thumb drive, or whatever you use to play out.
  2. Choose your external drive in Engine Desktop and render stems directly to that drive.
  3. THE PROBLEM with keeping the stems on that drive comes in with the next sync as Engine Desktop will erase them in an attempt to mirror your computer’s drive.
  4. So, before your next sync, get another external drive and copy the stem folder contents from your stem folder onto a different external drive. We can call this the stem backup drive.
  5. Sync again and your stem files will be erased.
  6. Drag your backed-up stem files onto your external drive that you use to play out, and everything works great.
1 Like
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Thanks for the inspiration, since I have the same problem with not enough drive space on my Macboook. I think I found a simpler solution for step 4. Just rename the Stems folder on the external drive before the sync and undo that afterwards.

My first tests were successful, but no guarantee. Please backup your libraries and files before trying it.

A more elegant option might be flagging the files as protected, but I have not tried that yet.

Since this is still a little clunky, I consider it a temporary workaround and would very much appreciate a solution within Engine.

3

Flagging the stem files as protected actually works nicely in MacOS.

4

Thanks. I’ll check it out!