Help please! Plex is Deleting Files from my External Drive

General Discussions
1

I am hoping someone here can help me. I searched past discussions and found a couple similar topics but didn’t find a resolution.

This has happened to me twice in the past month. I have several sports films/videos on an external Seagate drive. I added them all to my Plex Library a couple months ago and I add new ones regularly. Yesterday, I plugged my drive in to my laptop and fired up Plex. When I tried to play a video on Plex I got a “file not found” message. When I looked on my external drive, all of the files were gone. I am 99% sure it isn’t something I did. I know that because I was just watching one of the files on my computer. The files were there until I launched Plex. All I did was plug in the drive and launch Plex.

Thankfully, I was able to recover everything via OneDrive, but I’m hoping to solve this mystery. Is there a setting I should change? If I uncheck the box that allows Plex to delete files, will that prevent the issue going froward?

Thanks in advance.

2

Even with Settings > [Server Name] > Library > Allow media deletion enabled, you’ll need to actively select to delete individual items from within Plex for them to be deleted.

Beyond that, Plex should never touch your files

3

Was the folder structure of your files gone too? Plex won’t touch those, so if the folders were gone, then it’s likely to be a different culprit.

I’ve had a Plex server on two separate machines for years, and haven’t had the contents of an entire drive vanish on me.

4

So strange, I know. It’s happened twice in the past month and only after I’ve launched the Plex app. The files and folder disappeared from my external drive. The folder remained on Plex but it was empty.

5

Have you stored your media inside the Plex Media Server’s data directory?

6

I’m sorry. I don’t know what that means. Would you mind explaining?

7

The folder where Plex itself is installed. I doubt it’s the case, since the OP mentioned that they lost all the contents of their external drive, and I highly doubt that they have Plex installed onto it.

But it is a common issue when people see the installation folder for Plex, and store their media into that, rather than keeping it separate. If Plex scans the folder where Plex itself is installed, it can cause all kinds of strange issues.

8

Got it. In that case, no. Plex is installed on the C drive.

9

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.