Get the Second USB Ready
Step 1 of 2
Get the second USB ready
This gig gets built on the second drive. Whatever state your first one is in, nothing more happens to it from here.
If you borrowed this drive, do not format it. A drive that already plays on a player is already the right format. Make a folder on it and copy into that: their library stays, and you are playing just as fast.
- Plug the second USB into the computer.
- Does it already read on a player, with somebody's music on it? Then skip the format. Whatever it is, that player accepts it, and a new folder on it will play.
- Is this stick yours, and blank or expendable? If it is borrowed, stop: go back one line and put a folder on it instead. A drive no player reads can still be full of its owner's library.
- Confirm the disk name and size before you press format. Your original drive is still plugged into this computer and the two sit next to each other in the same list. Nothing has been copied off the original yet, so formatting the wrong one takes everything.
- Then: right-click → Format (or Disk Utility on Mac).
- Format: FAT32 · Scheme: MBR · Quick format: OK
- Over 32GB, and Windows will not offer FAT32 in that dialog? On a CDJ-3000X, CDJ-1500X, XDJ-AZ, XDJ-AN, OPUS-QUAD or OMNIS-DUO, or a CDJ-3000, XDJ-RX3 or XDJ-XZ on firmware 1.20, 1.11 and 1.23 or later, pick exFAT instead and move on: those read it.
- Older decks need FAT32, and on a big stick that means the free guiformat tool, which you have to download. No connection in the booth, no guiformat. Any stick under 32GB avoids the whole question.
Is the second USB ready to take your tracks?
You follow these steps at your own risk. Formatting or erasing a drive can permanently destroy data. Full disclaimer.