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Forum: VirtualDJ Technical Support

Topic: “VirtualDJ macOS CRASH When Unplugging External SSD
Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing a consistent crash in VirtualDJ on macOS whenever I disconnect my external SSD (USB). No matter what I’m doing—whether it’s playing tracks, browsing the browser, or recording—the application immediately quits as soon as the drive is removed. This only happens on macOS; on Windows, unplugging the same SSD works without any issues.

On Windows 10, I can unplug the SSD mid-session and VirtualDJ continues running without any problems—tracks on the internal drive continue to play, and the browser updates gracefully. But on macOS, the crash is immediate and total.

I’ve tried:

Updating to the latest VirtualDJ build

Reinstalling VirtualDJ

Testing with different USB cables and adapters

Verifying disk health (no errors found)

Resetting VirtualDJ settings to default

Has anyone else encountered this issue? Is there a workaround or a setting I can tweak to prevent VirtualDJ from crashing when an external drive is removed on macOS?

Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated!
 
Posted Fri 11 Apr 25 @ 7:44 am
Do you actually "EJECT" the hard drive from MAC OS, or you just unplug the cable ?

Windows will not make it a big deal if you just unplug a drive by pulling it's cable out of the USB socket.
However MACs are capable to self explode if you do this. On MACs you should ALWAYS use right click menu on the drive to "Eject" it first before disconnecting the cable.
 
PhantomDeejay wrote :
Do you actually "EJECT" the hard drive from MAC OS, or you just unplug the cable ?

Windows will not make it a big deal if you just unplug a drive by pulling it's cable out of the USB socket.
However MACs are capable to self explode if you do this. On MACs you should ALWAYS use right click menu on the drive to "Eject" it first before disconnecting the cable.


So if your SSD's USB cable fails, your Mac could explode? I think you're exaggerating.
First of all, this isn’t a macOS error—it’s a VirtualDJ issue.
And second—common sense, brother.

What’s clear is that VirtualDJ handles this situation properly on the Windows version, but not on macOS.

I’ll share the crash report details shortly.
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
Unfortunately, this doesn't happen when I do it on Mac (I just tried it with no controller connected) - graceful updating to the browser file listing and tree listing seems to happen on my end, and I could even load a track from the external, start it playing and eject the drive without interrupted play (the playing track and stems are fully in memory I guess), then reconnect thw drive without issue.

Given it is consistent on your end, did you happen to be connected to the internet while this happened? Does VirtualDJ auto restart? Maybe the devs already have a crash log on their end to look at.


Hi, thanks a lot for your reply.

To answer your question: yes, it happened both when connected to the internet and when offline. This crash occurs when you remove the USB drive without ejecting it from the operating system. Since my Mac only has two USB-C ports, I use a HUB to connect my external SSD—maybe the HUB failed and that’s why the SSD “disconnected” (I’ve already bought a new HUB just in case).

But after looking into it more, I realized that unplugging the SSD—whether with or without the HUB, and whether or not there’s a controller connected—always causes VirtualDJ to crash. It either restarts automatically, or if crash guard is disabled, it simply closes and shows an error. This does not happen on Windows when doing the exact same thing.

Next, I’ll test what happens if I eject the USB drive properly before unplugging it.
In any case, there should be some kind of process to handle unexpected disconnections or USB failures, so the software doesn’t crash completely.

From what I remember, this didn’t used to happen. Even if you unplugged the drive without ejecting it first, the program would keep working just fine.
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
@deejayjony yep I didn't actually try jusy unplugging the drive (I'm too afraid of corruption, even thought I'm using APFS on the drive, which arguably decent potential for recovery with copy-on-write behavior).

I agree though - a bad eject shouldn't crash the program.

A point though: be nice to @phantomdeejay - he is actually one of the devs of the software/would be one the ppl directly responsible for fixing the issue. I do agree with him that you should be using the eject mechanism of the OS always (just pulling the cable is bad practice, even on Windows and (unless I'm mistaken) it sounds like that is what you may be doing), even if that is just to protect the data on your own drive.


Apologies to @phantomdeejay — perhaps my previous translation wasn’t entirely accurate.

That said, I still believe the software should have some kind of exception handling to avoid crashing during runtime when the user removes a USB drive without ejecting it first, or if there’s a failure in the hub, cable, or USB disk itself. The program shouldn't shut down or restart because of this.

As I mentioned earlier, from what I remember, this didn’t happen in previous versions.
 
deejayjony wrote :
Hi everyone,
This only happens on macOS; on Windows, unplugging the same SSD works without any issues.


The clue here is that you are using the same SSD on both Windows and macOS; therefore, the SSD must be formatted as exfat to work on both platforms. I bought a Crucial X9 SSD during a Black Friday sale in 2023 only to find it was pre-formatted as exfat, allowing it to be used on either macOS or Windows. I experienced numerous errors, database corruption, and slow mounting and dismounting. It didn't crash the Mac, but it caused many database errors that took months to fix. Since I was going to use the SSD exclusively on macOS Sequoia, I reformatted the drive with Apple's APFS, and all troubles completely disappeared. Mounting and dismounting takes about 2 to 3 seconds, and loading song files into VDJ is virtually instant. I am always careful to eject the SSD and wait until the drive icon disappears from the screen before disconnecting it. I have two backup mechanical drives: one formatted as Apple Journal Extended for use with the older macOS Ventura and a second one formatted as exfat for use with Denon's EngineDJ software (which doesn't like Apple's formats). I would avoid exfat if possible.
 
Would double down on what's said there...ExFat is as basic as it gets filesystem wise and has terrible support on MacOS imo (any invalid eject = fsck on reconnection which cud be long if it is a large disk that is well used, and MacOS doesn't make the drive accessible until that is done). HFS+ or APFS is the way to go if you are Mac-only.
 
deejayjony wrote :

So if your SSD's USB cable fails, your Mac could explode? I think you're exaggerating.

Yes I am. The self-explode thing was meant as humor.

That being said, it is a well known fact that MACs don't like users to unplug their drives without safely removing (eject) them first. To the point that even considering to do so can cause your MAC to get ungry and raise CPU usage to 126% (that's also humor..)

At this point we are not trying to put the blame on the OS, VirtualDJ itself, or you the user.
We are trying to understand how and when that happens, as it's not a common issue.
After we are able to determine what happens (and why) we can try to find solutions.

PS: There's no need to post the entire Apple crashlog here, especially if you are not asked to do so.
Most of the time the crashlog itself is meaningnless, and all it does is just make the page unreadable.
 
BTW: Can you try with another drive, USB flash drive / USB stick ?