Crash when loading tracks from mapped drive

[MrKite]

Hi,

I try to get the whole story as brief and clear as possible. A month ago I installed a new windows 7 on a Solid state drive for super fast booting and loading of long mixes. Prices are still high, so I only have used a 128GB SSD, just for OS, programs and some 'active' tracks to work on, all the rest is still on the 'old' HD. (more than 300GB of FLAC files)

Because I did not want to relocate over 2000 songs one by one (if there is a way to have Cross search in an other location in bulk, please tell me!) so I moved the tracks that where on the old C:\users\jimmy\music to C:\ With the new SSD this drive became drive F:\.

I then used windows disk management to mount this F:\ drive on the empty folder C:\users\jimmy\music (kept the same username in both versions of Windows).

All my tracks were found and I made some mixtapes, played a live set, all hassle free like I'm used to from CrossDJ.

Now I've installed Cross 3.0 yesterday, all my tracks showed up and started preparing a new mixtape. All went well untill the 4th song, Cross DJ crashed completely loading the track. Leaving only the choice to wait for the program to stop or to end it manualy. Either way would be a disaster in a live situation. This always happened on the same track. It's always possible that a track gets corrupted, so loaded a backup copy and went on, few tracks later same problem with another track, complete crash when loading. I did not have a backup of this one, so I loaded the same in Audacity, played perfectly, nothing wrong in the wave form. I bounced a new FLAC file (I always use FLAC) and put it in the same location with a different name.

I continued the mixtape practise and decided to have all tracks analysed before loading (I notice the tracks need to be analysed again in order to get these wonderfull colours on the screen (I like them a lot). When the new track mentioned above started loading, the program crashed, keeping the track that was playing in a kind of 1/8 loop untill I pressed the 'stop program' button mentioned in the beginning of this story.

I experimented a bit and found the same crash when loading the track from the "Files" menu from "C:\users\jimmy\music\Mr.kiteWarped\Mr.kite02\track.flac" (I did this 4 times, 4 times crash when analysing starts, need to restart CrossDJ3.0) but when I load the same track (exact same file!) in the "Files" menu from "F:\Mr.kiteWarped\Mr.kite02\track.flac" the analysing goes fine, the track can be played and nothing crashes, everything perfect. (except that I was too tired and it was too late by then to write this or to continue practising..)

Short: when loading the track from a C:-drive that has a folder mapped to another drive, some tracks crash the program (and even a corrupt track should not have the result of everything crashing), when loading them directly from the drive, no problem.
Other things I noticed:
1) all the tracks that made Cross crash came from older folders (Mr.kite02, ... 03, ...05 (I have over 60 by now) but all folders are in the same subdir).

2)I fired up version 2.6 and had the same crash when loading the same track. This did not happen before installing CrossDJ 3.0 To confirm this, I went to a playlist from a mixtape I finished last week, started to analyse the tracks in this list and also some tracks made the program crash (and as I made the mix last week, I'm 100% sure this did not happen in 2.6)

I hope this long story gives you an idea where to look for the source of the crash, maybe this explains also other peoples crash reports? I work as IT technician so I hope this explanation helps to put the finger on the problem.

For me personaly: I can return to the old HD and have a bit more patience for booting and loading programs. (one step back, if it"s temporary I don't care)

I really would like a way to relocate tracks in bulk so i can have my entire collection moved from C:\.... to F:\......

In the long run I hope you guys find a fix for this problem as other people will also use maped drives (although this will not be a majority, I agree)

looking forward to your answers,

Jimmy

[sylMV]

Wow!
What a report!
Many thanks, i wish all the user provide detailed reports like this

We'll look into your issue and let you know.

[daniel clark]

any way for you to make the track avaible for support to run and see where the problem is ,,
i think there is a way to import files from another dictory ,,right click on the tab in the header you use to set up collections and the choices should be there
sorry about your delima and any info nessary to help with the solution will be appriciated ,,

[sylMV]

By the way you can relocate all your tracks all in once, even if it won't be instantaneous judging from the number of tracks.
In the "Menu > Collection > Resolve All Missing tracks", relocate one of the tracks in this window, and Cross should find all the others automatically (might be a bit long).

[RoJeC]

I think sylMV provides the best solution; by this all disks are accessed directly, without the mounting.

Further thoughts:
Maybe you should exclude the mountfolder from being AV-scanned (so only the direct disk is checked)
For testing purpose you might want to try run without AV at all.
Other issue could be the energy savings of the disk are causing delays.

An alternative to have your (partial) collections indepent of a source disk is to use the subst function. You can e.g. use RUN {subst k: c:\..\music} and {subst l: f:\..\music\}
By this your collection is indepent of physical disklocation. (if you like this than create a batch file in startup). The function is slightly different from mounting)

[MrKite]

I started relocating the tracks from the menu and it seems they are all found on the "F:\" drive now, will let it run.

Daniel, do you want the actual flac file that gives troubles? it only does it when loading from a "mapped" drive, not when loading directly from "F:" so after relocating, I will be fine (I'll test it tonight).

One more thing I forgot to mention, all tracks are on a partition (the F:-drive that is mirrored to a partion on a third HD (better be safe than sorry).

Do I need to mention that I have never seen a support forum that reacts as fast as this one? Realy makes me feel good to know you care!

Jimmy

[daniel clark]

if slmv doesnt request it ,,then its all good ,,
thanks for the props ,, we try when we are here,, hopefully you get it resolved and hang around to add to the fourm ,,

[MrKite]

Hi,

maybe this should be a new topic,...

While typing the above, Cross had finished relocating 3058 tracks. I closed the program, opened it, same tracks missing again! I pointed to the first one, Cross found the others very fast, stating it relocated another 1420 tracks (so less than at first atempt.)

I saved the collection to another name, closed Cross DJ, started it up, again the same tracks missing, loaded the saved collection, no difference, relocated, again, 1420 tracks relocated. CrossDJ 3.0 does not seem to remember the relocated files and the first one is always the same (from the beginning, not the end)

Another one, Some tracks are actualy removed/renamed, I can click them on the list and choose to "remove from collection", get confirmation, click "ok", track is still there, also after closing/opening the program.... This I tried in the "missing tracks" window and in the normal track list...

I hope you have another clear answer for this as well

Jimmy

[RoJeC]

If we are lucky it is your raid controller causing the trouble (maybe even for both issues).

I am pretty sure several people 'll start carefull testing...
Even if it is pointed down to the raid controller it could be worthwhile having it fixed...
Is your raid controller software based or hardware based?
If Software it will always cause time trouble when working with audio as adding a few (more) milliseconds to the processing could be over the audible edge.

[MrKite]

OK,

good that I thought of the mirror drives, they are just 2 partitions on different disks that are mirrored by Windows 7, so software raid for sure. I did this to be safe when a disk would crash as I already invested a lot of time in this collection.

I will turn of the miror and run it on a single disk and make a manualy backup copy for a while. If this solves (both) issues, I've learned something that is not in the books about setting up raid. Just strange that I ran this mirror also in 2.5.0 and 2.6.0 and never had a track that gave troubles. I find CrossDJ to be very stable and reliable (never needed the backup laptop since I started using it about a year ago) and all of the sudden the whole performance went down the drain (lucky not in public but just rehearsel).

I keep this post updated

jimmy