Blackmagic Forum

Some of us may use exFAT formatted drives to exchange data between PC and Mac. This is Ok so far, even if exFAT is less secure than HFS+ or NTFS, but don't try to put a disk database on such a drive!

One of our editors tried this recently, while not having a database on another drive yet. He got a pretty cryptic message (see below), but since it's saying that the application has recovered from the error. He followed the advice to restart the application and from that moment on DR was crashing all the time.

Since we were not aware that the problem was exFAT (no hint in the text whatsoever) we were fiddling around quite a while, including a fresh installation, until we finally pulled all disks from that machine. When we created a fresh database on another drive things went smooth again.

So, just don't use exFAT for a disk database. But it would be nice to get a more informative warning when trying it.

Is this because the size of the database exceeded 4GB?

Uli Plank wrote:Some of us may use exFAT formatted drives to exchange data between PC and Mac.

That's fine for externals, but you should be using only internal drives for databases. Those should always be formatted with the OS standard.

RCModelReviews wrote:Is this because the size of the database exceeded 4GB?

exFAT has no problems with files larger than 4GB. That was a FAT32 limitation.

Jim Simon wrote:That's fine for externals, but you should be using only internal drives for databases. Those should always be formatted with the OS standard.

Actually, we routinely use external drives for the PostgreSQL database.

I agree, you have to use great caution if you choose to use an external disk for a disk database. It's risky because if the drive spins down or otherwise becomes disconnected, you can not only lose the project you're working on, you can potentially scramble the whole thing. But I've done it for a few years and never had that problem.

Uli Plank wrote:Some of us may use exFAT formatted drives to exchange data between PC and Mac. This is Ok so far, even if exFAT is less secure than HFS+ or NTFS, but don't try to put a disk database on such a drive!

One of our editors tried this recently, while not having a database on another drive yet. He got a pretty cryptic message (see below), but since it's saying that the application has recovered from the error. He followed the advice to restart the application and from that moment on DR was crashing all the time.

Since we were not aware that the problem was exFAT (no hint in the text whatsoever) we were fiddling around quite a while, including a fresh installation, until we finally pulled all disks from that machine. When we created a fresh database on another drive things went smooth again.

So, just don't use exFAT for a disk database. But it would be nice to get a more informative warning when trying it.

Screenshot 2019-12-07 15.40.26.png

exFAT is not supported for Disk Databases.

Obviously.
But it would be nice if there would be a message coming up that is more understandable to a non-technical person.
I spent quite some time with that guy on the phone until I found out what he did.