All media shows as unavailable on Plex server but is accessible and playable at the correct location

Server Version#: 1.17.0.1709
Player Version#: Roku, Nvia Shield, Web Client-Player

All my Plex media showed up as unavailable yesterday, as I suddenly discovered when I tried to continue a series I’d been watching a couple of days ago. I’ve seen this happen before, and promptly recovered it, when my server has rebooted after an update or power outage, but I’m completely stumped about it this time. Even though Plex shows the files as unavailable, they are in exactly the correct location, as confirmed when I click on the red “unavailable” marker.

The files are on mapped shares from a Synology DS216j, and where server is on a Windows 2012 server. There are no problems with network connectivity. I can play the files from a workstation and the server directly off the diskstation and the mapped Windows shares.

So far I’ve:
Disconnected and remapped the windows shares.
Rebooted the diskstation and the Windows server (including restarting Plex server)
“Repair installed” Plex server.

So, all the media is intact and playable from everything except Plex. I’m at a loss with this and don’t want to start removing files or doing a complete Plex reinstall. Any ideas what could be causing this, or possible solutions?

I did another plex “repair install” which didn’t help. Then I signed out and released the server. I went back in but couldn’t reclaim the server until I launched the localhost:32400/web console and then reclaimed the server. Once I did that all the media was “available” again. Pheeeew! :grinning:

This is an amazing job, the way you narrowed it down to authorization and then the bundled app.
Would you have a minute to complete the picture for me? I’d like to visualize in my mind exactly what you saw in the GUI when you started it. I realize you said unavailable, but would you provide a bit more please? I’m not sure I want to try to simulate it.

Thank you sir.

I started having this same issue a couple days ago. Media streams just fine on the pc but when I log on to PS4 to view the media shows up but shows as unavailable. I have restarted the server and PC.

Hi,

This should help understand the the problem I encountered and the solution that worked for me.

All media on my Plex server was in this state:

[https://support.plex.tv/articles/201806463-why-does-plex-media-server-say-my-content-is-unavailable/]

… except none of the conditions in the article applied. The media files were in the correct location (as seen when you click on the red “unavailable” button) and I could play them outside of Plex i.e. double-clicking in Windows File Explorer. I tried shutting down and restarting everything, plus repair installing Plex, but it was still in the same state no matter what.

I really didn’t want to restore or rebuild the server at this stage so I decided to try this:

  1. Go to Settings with the account that sees the server. You will see “Server signed in as”. You can click the “Sign Out” button next to that, which then releases your server as “unclaimed”.

  2. Follow this process to re-claim the server:

[https://support.plex.tv/articles/218136308-why-is-there-an-unclaimed-media-server-on-my-network/]

After I claimed the server all the media was once again available.

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Thanks @Ogontion1! So I tried your instructions… they did not work. So I did a little more digging around and some tweaking. Come to find out my two year old the other day cleared out the name of the external hard drive and when I renamed it the same thing I misses a space. SO after correcting this stupid minor error its all back up now. So I am good to go.
Thanks

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