Move Your Music Library and Serato Crates to an External Hard Drive in 5 Easy Steps!

[@djaga4404]

This was money!!!! Everything worked. Best video on the topic out there!!! I appreciate you and owe you one.

[@theHitmanDDub]

I’m glad to be able to help you out.

[@djaga215]

I appreciate you Hitman!! I will give it a try when I get a chance and will let you know how it goes. Thanks for doing this video!!

[@theHitmanDDub]

No problem. I hope this helps. For me the main take away is to copy the entire Serato Folder with your Sub Crate info on the same location of your main Music Library Folder and paste it on an external drive and don’t paste neither one inside of a folder keep them as their main folder.

[@DGMAsia]

Hi! Thank you for your tips. My problem is, I had two external HD for my Serato. I tried moving them to one 4TB External SSD and it didn’t copy everything

[@theHitmanDDub]

Your problem sounds similar to my problem when I got a new MacBook and tried this method. My Serato Crates couldn't find my song files when I saved them to the new Mac. I ended up having to open Serato with the old External Drive connected to the computer and manually move the song files using the Serato File Feature inside of the software. I followed these steps to do it: 1. Open Serato DJ Pro. 2. Open the Files panel. You can do this by clicking on the 'Files' button located in the left-hand corner of the main screen. 3. In the Files panel, navigate to the location of the files you want to move. 4. Select the song(s) from the external hard drive within your SERATO Crates you want to move and sync back up. You can select multiple songs by holding down the Ctrl key (or Command key on Mac) while clicking on the songs. 5. Drag and drop the selected files/folders to the desired new location in the Files panel. 6. A prompt will appear with the following options: Copy: This makes a copy of the selected files and folders in the new location. Your Serato library will now contain entries for both the originals and copies. ***I USED THIE "COPY" OPTION TO MAKE SURE THE SERATO DATA BASE WILL STAY SYNCED TO THE EXTERNAL DRIVE SONG FILES AND NOW TO THE NEW SONG FILE LOCATION.*** Move: This moves the selected files and/or folders to the new location. Your Serato library and crates will now reference the files in their new location. 7. Select 'Copy"'or 'Move' to sync and move the files to the new location. PS Remember, after moving your files, your Serato library and crates will now reference the files in their new location. Also, make sure to backup your music library and Serato Data Base before trying these steps. Hope this works.

[@Purefire2012]

Hey Brother, information was pretty good! Still have an issue, I was able to load all my crates into my new machine/DJ Pro. I am able to open the crates and see the music listed, but everything is in yellow and not found. I copied everything over as it looked on my old machine. Did I miss a step?

[@theHitmanDDub]

Hi @Purefire2012, I had the same problem when the computer I used for this video (2013 MacBook with a 2nd Internal HD) got water damaged and I had to get a new 2021 MacBook Pro computer. I followed my own steps and I encountered the same thing and so did another user that reached out to me about this same issue. In both cases, I found that the File Location for the song tracks in the Serato Data Base wasn't pointing to the new File Location on the new Laptop (exactly). Below is the rsolution I used to reconnect my songs and update the Serato Data Base information and the response I wrote to the other User having the same problem. "So I have good news and bad news to tell you from my experience with transfering my files from the old computer to the new one. Good news: 1.) I completely wiped my Serato clean by uninstalling Serato and deleting any Searto Data Base on the new computer (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP OF ALL YOUR FILES ON AN EXTERNAL HD). 2.) I reinstalled Serato, 3.) I opened Serato, then opened the File tab and went to my Music Library and manually dragged my library folders into Serato (hopefully you don't have a bunch of Sub Folders because you'll have to drag each one into Serato). 4.) Now you should see a Serato Crate with the name of your Folder on your HD, 5.) I reanalyzed all my tracks again by highlighting and dragging them onto the "ANALYZE" spot. Now you should be able to see your songs within Serato because the Serato Database is now seeing your songs in the new HD location and not the old location. And now is the Bad News if you are like I was when I transfered my Serato Tracks to my new computer. My Old HD housed my Music Library in the root directory because the HD was reformatted and not the System Drive (which Mac won't allow you to save anything in the root directory without reformatting the HD). So when I brought over the Serato Folders, my crates that I have created was looking for my songs in the Root Directory and not the new location. Luckily I used the Lexicon DJ Software to to resync my missing files for most of my Crates. But for some of my Crates, I had to manually put them back together. Hopefully, your Music Library Folder on the Old Computer wasn't on the Root Directory but inside of a folder like MUSIC, DOWNLOADS, etc. Where it's just a matter of saving your MAIN MUSIC FOLDER from the old computer into the same location on the New Computer as you had it saved on the old computer. So after you do steps 1-5 from the first paragraph, everything should be synced backup." I hope this'll also fix your problem. If not, let me know and maybe we can do a Zoom Call to see if we can fix the problem.

[@lifeofchris_5827]

I want to ask you a question and give me your personal opinion on this. What do you think about external drive for dj music Library. Some people says it's butter cause you can easily move your Library from one computer to the other. also i'm new just starting up and fixing my music library, looking for some new ideas.

[@theHitmanDDub]

Hi @lifeofchris_5827, The Pros for using an external hard drive to DJ with is... 1. Storage Space: External drives can provide a lot of additional storage space if your internal drive is running low. 2. External drives make it easy to plug into Serato, VDJ, etc. on different computers and you'll have all your music library with you wherever you go. Also, in Serato, your crates will still be intacted (just it might be out of order-but it'll still be there and usable) ***(Shared Library Information: With software like Serato DJ Pro, the library information for files on your external drive is stored on the drive itself. This means if you plug that external drive into another machine running Serato DJ Pro, the crates and tracks will automatically be visible in the other machine’s library.)*** 3. As a Backup of your music library and Serato Crates. Cons: 1. I don't want to be dependant on plugging a buncg of extra peripherals into my computer (I have limited ports on my compter) 2. Depending on the speed of your external drive, you might experience slower load and read times for your tracks. With that said, when I started DJ'ing, I had a laptop with a small internal Hard Drive. So I used an external Hard Drive. But now I was able to get a laptop with a huge internal Hard Drive to DJ with. So I keep my music saved on the laptop's internal Hard Drive, so I don't have to worry about plugging in my external Hard Drive to get to my music, and worrying about using extra cpu speed to read and write to an external drive. Right now I backup my music library on an external drive until I find the time to upload my music library to my cloud storage site. I hope this helps. If you have any more questions don't hesitate to message me back. Also, on Tuesday Nights from 9-10pm EST, there's a group of us DJ's that go live on Twitch (hosted by TBM Productions @tbmproductionsdj1) to talk about DJ Stuff and answer questions from the audience in the chat. Check it out if you have time or watch the replay the following week on KZbin: the "DJ Round Table Show." The Live Twitch Link is www.twitch.tv/tbmproductions_buddy/schedule?seriesID=53b83c23-c0c4-4dcc-b6a0-2f441c83b14a

[@DJShinobi-i8w]

Hello Hitman! i follow all the steps but it wont show my crates, music etc. into my new laptop. i hope you can help me .

[@theHitmanDDub]

Did you place the Old Serato Folders from the old computer into the HD Location on the New Computer that stores your Serato Folders (i.e. the "Music" Folder on the main Hard Drive)? Since you have already opened Serato, you should be able to find the Drive Location that Serato stores it's information. Just paiste your old Serato Folders FILES ONLY (don't put your Folder, as is, that says Serato into the NEW Serato Folder) - meaning don't have it so that when you click on the Serato Folder, you'll see a second Folder that says Serato which has all you files located in it. You don't want that. I hope this helps, if not feel free to schedule a Zoom call so I can see your computer screen and possibly walk you through a solution. Click on this link to schedule a time if needed: mepsiphientertainment.hbportal.co/schedule/650eefcbddc05105ce8f3f53 Let me know how things turned out.

[@rickytillery2676]

What do you do with the serato folder that came with the new serato install

[@theHitmanDDub]

I need more details. From my experience, any drive that has music that was played in Serato, Serato would automatically create a _Serato folder on that drive with the location and crate information of that song saved there. You can either leave the extra _Serato folder alone or delete it (after backing it up on another external hard drive or flash drive in case you actually needed that folder). The main thing is that when you move your Serato folder and music, your Serato Database needs to know where to find that song’s new location on your computer’s storage. I hope this helps. If not, you can schedule a zoom meeting with me and I will be more than happy to help you out. Here’s the link to schedule a time: mepsiphientertainment.hbportal.co/schedule/650eefcbddc05105ce8f3f53

[@Nick.Gabriel]

Does this trasfer over cues aswell?

[@theHitmanDDub]

Everything from my song’s ID Tags, Cue Points, Serato Flips, track colors, Soundswitch Lighting Information, etc. transferred over as well. At least for me it did by following these steps.

[@itsdjsoto]

Does this not work if you have smart crates?

[@theHitmanDDub]

Hi @itsdjsoto. I'm not sure about smart crates. I'm thinking if you copy the SERATO Folder that contains the smart crates within this folder that are linked to those particular song files and they point to the same file locations on the new external drive as it did on the previous drive, in theory it should work. But don't quote me because I never had looked at my smart crates after I moved my songs to another external drive. I just assumed everything transfered correctly. I was more concerned about all my main crates. Also, I did a quick "Crate Hackers: DJ.Chat Bot" inquiry about this question and they said "As for smart crates, they should work as long as the file paths remain the same. However, it's important to note that some users have reported issues when moving libraries between different operating systems (like from Windows to Mac). If you're planning to do this, you might want to test it out with a few files first."

[@itsdjsoto]

@@theHitmanDDub I’ve only ever tried to put crates on an external to play on serato on another laptop and didn’t notice the smart crates but i don’t think i added the files to the songs maybe that’s why. I’ll give it another try eventually, thanks!