I know there are volumes of forum topics/replies on the subject, so I'll apologize in advance. I did stay up last night reading several interesting discussions on file management, as well as TSP vs SSL. However, I still don't feel I have an answer to my questions...

Here's my situation...

When I got back into DJing a few years back, I had an old MacBook with Traktor on it. Most of my dj buddies had PCs, so I decided to format my 1TB external drive in FAT32 format. I now have a PC, which I'm using for DJ gigs, and have recently been using Serato.

I have seen a lot of people complain about the file management in Traktor, and it can be a bit frustrating at times, but one thing I have come to rely on, is the ability to search my entire disk by any metadata field (not just files imported to my library). I have yet to find a way to do this in Serato. Is it possible?

In order to do this in Traktor however, I have been dumping all my music files into the same folder titled "music" on my external. With nearly 200GB of music in this folder, I finally ran into an issue with the FAT32 format. It will not allow any more files into my "music" folder. I had to start a "music2" folder (temporary fix), in order to put more music on my disk. This sucks, because it takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R for my "music" folder to load in Traktor and resets if I navigate to another folder in the Explorer.

Sooo...

I need a creative solution to reorganize my entire music collection, in such a way, that I can search for a specific song on my hard drive without loading 500GB of music into the library (RAM hog) or sifting through multiple folders and subfolders. Ideally, this solution would be beneficial in both Traktor AND Serato, and without running some third-party software.

Should I reformat my external (NTFS)?! That would be a pain in the rear, and I'd still like to be able to use it with my Mac occasionally. I'd be willing to do it though, if it will benefit Serato as well as Traktor, which brings me back to the question I asked earlier about being able to efficiently search un-imported files in Serato, without reorganizing everything into artist folders and album subfolders (making title searches more difficult).

Does any of this make sense? Haha Maybe I'm over-thinking it?