I have noticed that movies I know I had have simply vanished from my server. Things I have watched more than once are suddenly no place to be found… not on the plex server or even on the windows machine. I cant tell you over what time frame this has been happening, I thought I was mis-remembering what I had, but now I am sure of things I had that I have no more. any idea where to even start looking for this issue?
If you’re not finding those missing files on the file system then it is not a Plex issue.
I could accept that, but I have a machine just dedicated to plex. and its the only place I have to start from. I dont know of windows deleting files by itself either, and I am the only one with access to delete anything… I had to replace my backup device, so I cant go back past the last two weeks to see whats missing… but im trying to see what else might be the cause, or if anyone else has had this happen to them before.
Have you run a disk check on the drives yet?
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Let me add a new detail. I added a movie I was sure I had before but wasn’t showing up in plex. When I scanned for new files it re-added the missing movie as it should, but showed it was partially watched. I had run a checkdisk on the drives, and I used crystal disk info to be sure the drives were in good shape
Plex tracks a lot in its database. So even though the file was no longer visible to Plex, it kept the metadata, such as watched state or amount watched.
Do you share your account/device with anyone?
And if so, do you have the deletion feature activated in Plex?
(Settings - Server - Library)
My library is shared with 2 apple tv’s and one Roku. The allow media deletion box is unchecked.
This server is for my kids and my wife, and some of the stuff missing they would have no interest in watching… im the horror buff for example and the only one in the house. The server is not shared outside the house
Are you hosting Plex on a Windows system?
I discovered dozens of movies that disappeared a couple of years ago. Being a 43-year software engineer and having watched Microsoft’s tricks it is my opinion it is Microsoft deleting things they don’t think you should have. I switched to CentOS Linux and have not had that problem since.
Some might say “conspiracy theory” but that is what the result seems to be.
it is a windows machine. Would I put it past microsoft? No… not at all… but the missing items seem so… random. I cant figure out why anything would ever pick these files
Perhaps an over-zealous antivirus software falsely identified them as malware and deleted them?
Are you using 3rd-party antivirus software?
I use Comodo, but it wont delete anything. I have it set to quarantine everything
This quarantine usually has a size limit.
Have you checked the log files of it? It should at least log any quarantine/delete actions.
yea, there is nothing in it.
The machine isnt used by anyone for anything other than plex, and I put files on it remotely.
Sonarr/Radarr/CouchPotato/SickRage etc by any chance?
I dont know what that is…
I use windows networking to copy files to network drives. The machine is right here next to me, but it doesnt get used directly unless something is wrong with it.
Ok cool. Just trying a process of elimination. So we can safely rule that scenario out.
Bummer - But that is what I saw too. They deleted #2 of 3 movies and weird things like that. So many that we still come across things that were “I’m sure we had that …” kinds of disappearances.
Did you ever find a cause for this?
No, not with any certainty. My suspicion is Microsoft is paid to find and remove things. And as with other things they don’t talk about it. That’s why I switched to Linux.
