Along_the_Wire
I’ve found out over the years that if you want a USB to work on everything, the only format that works on every single Pioneer CDJ or XDJ and also Denon etc is MSDOS FAT32.
Although some USBs come sold already formatted like that, they could be ExFat, OSX (Journalled HFS+), NTFS and so on. If you’re playing at home on exFat and its worked you may never know to look at this. It gives people a false sense of security… who even cares about formats?
I’ve seen a few professional DJs turn up to events or particularly bar gigs and come unstuck with it before because they are faced with older CDJs, or older firmware on them. Everyones got stuff at home that just works and its always the public gigs that catch DJs out.
While the CDJ-2000nxs2 (2016) and CDJ-3000 (2020) and XDJ-XZ (2019) seem to work across the board, and new Denons seem to accept everything - the XDJ-1000mk2 (2016) needed MSDOS (FAT32) like some of the 2012/2010 CDJs do.
If you want to Format your USB to work on all types and ages of players just format to “MSDOS FAT32” using the below and re export everything. Then you can just re export how you had it, and forget about it.
Windows doesn’t let you do it natively if the stick is “too big” it insists exFat above 32gb - but there is a workaround.
MAC USERS
- Go to Applications > Disk Utility.
If you see your USB stick multiple times in a tree - choose the top version of it.
Then click this
Other info about USBs and CDJs / safe practises
Sandisk Ultra Flair USB 3.2 is the fastest stick I’ve ever seen on a Rekordbox Export, all of my other sandisks crawl but are reliable.
To be safe I have 3 sticks out with me when gigging - Most of my public performances are on my main 64gb stick which contains what I intend on playing. However - at gigs now I always have with me as a backup:
1 × 64gb USB rekordbox exported the same as my gig stick parked in my headphones case.
1 × 256gb stick with every single playlist & track I own on it, on my keyring - carried away from my headphones case. At a public event, this gets loaded into the second CDJ in case there’s a problem on the fly or if I need to completely change the plan / style for some reason - I’ve then got access to everything.
My Macbook is also away in my bag so I can fix up a new USB or use it in Export mode with a CDJ etc (nicer for long sets). More commonly find new tracks on my travels and export them if I have time to kill.
BACKUP
My RB library is also backed up on Google Drive as are all my music files so if it really went to shit I can log in and rebuild a section of my library on a different computer quite quickly.
On occasion these have saved me or a friend in trouble so I thought I’d put them here in case anyone else is an avid problem solver or just wants to focus on music and not tech.
