I’m new to working with Plex and I was messing with collections to see if I could put movies in a particular order without using a playlist. After adding movies to one collection I didn’t realize Plex doesn’t deselect the files after adding to a collection. I then went to add other files to a different collection but because the previous files were still selected it added them and the new ones. Once I realized what happened I went to delete them but it I guess it deleted the files from my hard drive cause they weren’t there anymore. I went to the recycle bin but they weren’t there either to restore. The free space on my hard drive increased as well. What the heck happened to my movies?? Some of them I don’t have anymore because the disks were damaged…
This happened a couple days ago and I didn’t realize what happened right away.
I’m on Windows 10.
Thanks in advance and I’m sorry if I’m not clear enough!
If you have checked Settings > [Server Name] > Library > Allow media deletion, this will allow you to directly delete files from Plex as well as your file system. From what I remember, there’s a dialog asking you if you really want to delete the files.
Therefore… if that’s what you did… yes, your files are gone/deleted (that’s why I opted to disable the option to delete videos from within Plex).
Some background on collections:
Movies are associated to a collection by assigning that collection tag to them. You don’t actually delete anything in Plex (except for items from a playlist).
Thanks for that. After I wrote out my problem I remembered the “tag” functionality of Collections and felt stupid. I just saw “delete” and didn’t think anything else of it. Now I have to figure something out for my lost movies. Thankfully I only “lost” 3 that I know of, the rest I still have the disks for. I just have to go through the time consuming process process of re-adding and reoptimizing them.
