upto 36 yrs of music ive collected from earl house acid techno the drives have bn checked they werent corrupt but now you wipe nearly8000 tunes i e bought bn gifted by djs from when i played from 1989 to 1996 and Ive jad mixstream pro for 3yrs and id like to know why after nearly 2 yrs you are deleting my music collected over 36yrs ive had a college lectures examine my usb sticks no corruption at all yet you think its ok to delete them yet i still have my italian house usb 1 with 1000 songs ut now even playlists when i go back they are red and no longer playable now it says to format said usb sticks yet collede lecturer insists the fault lies with engine dj as all files wld have bn deleted and both sticks held 3 folders each now only 1 remains that my lecturer said its not corrupt and for it to leave 1 folder proves that it cld only be engine dj os
- Punctuation marks have a purpose;
- Backups have a purpose too;
- If you would be a little more verbose on how you ended up in this situation we can be helpful. You could very well have done something wrong yourself (for starters, you forgot to make a backup).
Sorry to hear that any of this happened. Engine doesn’t go and randomly delete files.
In all seriousness, we do want to help and punctuation does go a long way in helping us understand what you are trying to convey through written word.
All my collection is backed up on 2x usb 1x sd & on pc sdd, failing them all at the same time I’ve still got my originals backed up as data files across 8 dvds (which I would lose all my beat grids & cue points but at least I wouldn’t lose my tunes)
Of course, don’t format anything. But, I will say it’s highly unlikely that Engine DJ deleted the music files. When you say the files are “red” that indicates to me that you’re looking at them in the Engine DJ software. Look at your drives outside of Engine (macOS Finder or Windows File Manager) and see if you can determine where the files are located. Go back into Engine software and right click on a track and try to manually relocate it.
Meanwhile, as others have said, we would need a lot more information on how you organize your library.
There’s a lot of people here that can offer you insights.
Exactly - if all those pirated tracks from other DJs were worth anything more than throw away value then a 50 buck HArd drive would have been a really sensible purchase.
I’m not entirely sure engine has any sort of delete option or indeed functionality to delete tracks.
This seems like the sort of original post a fanboy of a rival manufacturer would fabricate
I’m really sorry you’re having challenges with this, but the tone of your venting suggests you think someone at Denon came in and deleted files, which surely isn’t the case.
You also don’t include any valuable details that might allow us to offer potential solutions. Have you been backing up your files for these decades? Have you recently moved folders or playlists? Is this college lecturer technical support?
welcome back. 
Oh it has, if you delete the collection from inside engine os (desktop) then it’ll wipe the data from where it’s getting your collection data from, ie from a usb/sd/ssd.
Believe me I’ve already made that mistake, luckily I had a backup.
Hi people ok i was frustrated and dont know much about digital what i do know is ive been collecting white labels since 88 to 96 in 23rd precint im not IT literate but im not stupid either although ive got issues ,i apologies for the way i came on and wrote but i dont deserve to be 1 failing punctuation marks 2ndly tbh people saying ive not built up a vast amount of vinyl that i got someone who knows more than me vastly in the IT department im bipolar that im not ashamed to admit and go manic so the private school person who was taught punctuation well done i struggled to get through 3rd year 3rdly i bought my dex mixstream pro 3 and a half years ago my usb sti ks wer working fine then they started to disappear all but 1 set of italian house i collected through the years 36 yrs collecting white lables and other 12" imports and given records cds tapes i made that i still havent finished installing to dropbox … i apologies to those who are offended by my post . Sorry … so can i start again a d said literal expert can put the pun tuation .arks in if they wish to. About 1 year ago my tunes started going missing then it said change format to efat or fate format why after 2yrs of no problems if someone cld help explain then more recently since start of year roughly the songs on previous playlists are coloured red and it wont let me play any of them so i apologise for being rude to some i didnt realise or truly understand this forum but i wld like to learn and wld be grateful for help and advice please . Sorry to those i offended
Chris.
I get that writing & punctuation may be something you have an issue with (I see you’re bipolar), …& that’s fine. No judgement here.
The problem is, I got half way through both of your posts, & just lost the will to live. 
Can I suggest you ask a friend to type this out for you? Once we’ve got a bit more clear info, maybe we can start to help.
The obvious thing that everybody else has already pointed out though is, backup your music. And update those back ups regularly.
And just to say in 1986 they put me out of school because they didnt understand me and niether did i music was my solution to my dreams so saved up milk and paper round money i got my dads 2nd hand Toshiba stacking hifi with diamond needle bought another pioneer amp and borrowed a generator when required basically reversed it to work as a mixer and bought another turntable made my scratch belts out of my subutteo cloth was already buying records and a litre of 2stroke and away we went playing and trying to scratch and play obscure psychedelic ohm moody blues music hi nrg hip hop jungle oh and believe it or not a karaoke machine because the mic echoed do you want the full 36 yr history of my vocabulary and music records oh and big metion to the late John Peal and his sessions on a thursday night 11pm to 2am recording obscure and up and coming music if you all remember and getting another slap for being late getting up and another from teachers for missing registration as nobody then understood and i still dont understand things writely but if you cld help then i wld be really glad to learn from you all so sorry
Sorry to bother you again see if my music is backed up in my Dropbox folder why would i have to continually back it up . Thanks for your patience with me and I appreciate your help so thanks all .and can you be a bot patient with me for a wee while thank you all . Oh and if i make mistakes i would rather be told so I can learn and amend them in future cheers all appreciated
Do you have a local DJ store where you could go to Chris? If you go there with the DJ unit, your computer (if it’s a laptop) and the USB stick, they may be able to help you solve this.
I think the issue with the internet and written text, it’s often difficult for both parties to diagnose and solve anything as we’re not seeing it, and perhaps struggling to understand fully what your issue is.
I don’t know where you are located but if you are near me I would be happy to help you out. I am in NE Pennsylvania. I work IT and use Engine. So between both skills I may be able to help.
Hey Chris, sorry I bashed you for the punctuation marks. I now understand where you are coming from, and maybe not everybody is as good in writing. Sorry!
Nevertheless, it is difficult to understand how you organised your music and what could have gone wrong when you cant come out of your words. As others have pointed out, maybe get some local help. Or maybe that IT teacher can help writing this out?
One tip I can give: I suspect from your writings that you put your collection directly on a bunch of USB media? The problem with that is that USB drives aren’t the most reliable storage. Even if they seem ok on the surface, they not always are. There are flaws even your IT teacher can look over. Its better to have your collection on your internal harddrive, back this up properly (2 backups on 2 different media, for example 1 cloud and one external drive, incremental backups being a plus), and then use sync manager to export playlists to USB sticks you use on your Denon gear. Or if you must use an external USB storage media for your main collection, use an SSD, not a USB stick, and again make 2 backups of it in 2 different locations, maybe 1 incremental.
Incremental backups may be a difficult concept here, but that boils down to writing only the changes to your backup, so that this backup can go back in time (like Apples Time Machine). Suppose you did something wrong yourself, and deleted the wrong folder, you can retrieve that folder without restoring the full backup and losing newer additions.
I sincerely apologize for talking bad about your writing. Thank you for being honest about why you write the way you do. I too wish you weren’t far away as I would have offered to help in person. I’ve been using Engine since 2017 and never had it randomly delete files.
For what it’s worth, I do hope you get it sorted out as I know what it’s like to lose precious data. I can only imagine how upset you must feel to lose songs from the early days of your DJing.
Chris, I see you’re in Scotland. Get yourself into Glasgow sound centre. They’re great guys in there, very knowledgeable and always happy to help.
I’ve no doubt they’ll get you sorted.
Good luck 
Thanks @Don 76 ,im only 30 mins from Glasgow . And thanks to all for the advice , ive managed to find or recover most of my music .and finding more in miscellaneous folders that i will need to go through and configure into correct folders . Ive also found that the so called m8 who who set up ebgine dj on my laptop has taken out the new terabyte hard drive my dad had not long got installed with a slower drive , The laptop is older and i wont get windows 11, Can i get some advice please ,Can you tell me a decent not too expensive laptop with the correct or right installed equipment for djing please and a decent external drive ,correct and decent usb sticks and ssd drive to use with my mixstream pro and laptop . It would be appreciated even if someone on here who is looking to sell a 2nd hand laptop that would be fine for me let me know.as i would be interested in buying . And thanks again for all the advice folks .