Format or delete before adding new playlists?

I've never had a track simply not load, but a few on here (including myself) have noticed that track parameters do not get exported (such as hot cues) from time to time, requiring a re-export.  As a result, I've habituated the practice of exporting a playlist twice.  Now, I've done this over a two releases because there's been nothing in the release notes specifically addressing discovery or resolution of the issue.

There's another reason you might consider nuking the media when you export:  Previous sets you exported will have their track's cue points, loops and hot cues reset to whatever your latest export has, so if you (like me) like to visit portions of previous mixes and expect to have your performance settings there...you're screwed.  I 'fixed' this by writing a script that makes each playlist use softlinks to files in a unique directory for that playlist.  The downside is, if I use track "x" in three playlists, on the media it will be there physically three times.  Media these days are huge, so memory consumption is not as important as it was a few years ago.  The benefit to me is that set will be there and never change unless I edit it directly, like having a virtual wallet of CDs from back in the day...

Hi Pope, thanks for the reply! So when you say nuking the media you mean formatting it? 

I formatted my USB's Saturday night using a method I found on youtube and had no problems. Shame as its long winded exporting the playlists every time rather than just adding a new one. 

I no longer reformat the media since I've isolated each playlist;  I just export new playlists until there is no more room on the drive, then I load up another thumb drive...

Probably should mention that I don't use RB as my master track database, it is just there for preparing sets created with other tools.

How do you means 'isolated each playlist'?

When you set cue points and loops in Rekordbox, it saves those parameters to the master library.  So, if you put together playlist called 'foo', it will have those settings.  This is good.

Now, I put together a new set called 'bar', and I have new cue points and loops for some tracks in that set that are different from before, the master library will be changed to the latest settings.  This is also good.

However, now the cue points in 'foo' have changed unintentionally, because Rekordbox does not keep cue point information in the playlist data structure.  This is bad, because anywhere you change a cue point, that change is reflected in ALL playlists.

To solve this problem, I create a directory for each playlist, then fill it with softlinks to each track used in the playlist.  Rekordbox thinks each one is unique, even though the PC it links to the same data.  This way, a playlist will always represent how that playlist was created and will never change unless I want it to.  The downside to this approach, is the Rekordbox library view will have x versions of the same track, where x is how many playlists where I've used that track (each one has it's own unique cue points.)  I don't care; I only use the playlist view in Rekordbox.

Mate I appreciate the comments but you have gone way off topic. Thanks for the info and this is a great idea if you use set cue points and loops. I don't I just mix on the fly. 

I just want to know if other users format there usb sticks when adding new playlists or just add new playlists to the usb and leave existing playlists not there.

At several gigs at different venues Ive only been able to play about 50% of the tracks on the USB. 

Since I made this thread I have formatted the USB's every time and since not had any problems with tracks not loading on the USB stick when playing out.

Very time consuming formatting and exporting the playlists Im using each time!! 

Anyone had this problem? Any comments?