Blackmagic Forum

Hello!

I have been working on a project in which Davinci's Local Library is stored on an external SSD drive (I also have a copy on a server) because I'm working on different computers.

Today I tried to open that Library, and it just doesn't connect, without displaying any error. I haven't been able to import de Project.db file either.

I haven't found this error online... could someone help me?

System specs - macOS Sequoia 15.1 / Davinci V. 19.0

The operation of libraries on external drives tends to be unpredictable -- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Not clear what you mean by "I haven't been able to import de Project.db file either" but can you access the library with the OS? If so, copy it to a disk you can reliably access, and try again to connect it. You could also move the projects manually, but you'd still need a working connected library to make use of them.

It's absolutely misadvised to have the Library on an external storage.
If that storage is formatted to exFAT, it's not working at all.

If it’s external it better be formatted NTFS or a Unix/Mac filesystem.

BMD strongly advises against putting the database on external storage but for me it works just fine.

When you say you can’t import the project.db it sounds like you’re trying to do something with the db as if it itself is a project - which it is not.

We can probably help you. I think it’s unlikely that the disk database is corrupted.

Are you on Windows? If so and the drive is mounting to a letter (like D: ) the most common issue is that it’s now “randomly” mounted to a different drive letter. It’s not really random but that doesn’t matter right now.

jimshell wrote:I have been working on a project in which Davinci's Local Library is stored on an external SSD drive (I also have a copy on a server) because I'm working on different computers.

Blackmagic support has generally advised against using an external drive for your local disk-based library. The reason why is, often external drives will momentarily go to sleep trying to save power and reduce wear, and if that happens when the drive is trying to read or write, it can corrupt the library files and wreak havoc.

Having said that, I got away with it for years and years because I was careful (and you could argue, lucky). Since then, when I have to work on a small system, I partition the system SSD so there's a boot drive and then a partition for the library and cache files, and that generally works for me. This SSD is always connected, 100% of the time, and there's almost no chance for data loss.

With larger systems, you have the option of using a PostgreSQL database server, which you can do on a cheap, low-powered computer that just hosts the database. But in general, the above method will work.

I agree that BMD strongly advises against putting the database on an external drive. I don’t agree that the disk going to sleep as you describe can corrupt the database. If this were so then any writes on the system would have the same risk. It doesn’t happen. If it did that’d be a huge OS bug and they’d fix it asap.

Thanks to everybody for your comments! You all helped me to solve the issue, I think it had to do to the fact the the library was stored in an SSD drive.

Joe Shapiro wrote:I agree that BMD strongly advises against putting the database on an external drive. I don’t agree that the disk going to sleep as you describe can corrupt the database.

That came directly from support. Over the years, I've learned not to argue with them because they know a lot more than I do.

Please read my response here:
viewtopic.php?p=1136279

I was a software dev, architect, and vp of software in my previous career. I have a great deal of experience with these things and haven’t yet heard a good explanation of why this would be do and not be fixable.