Hi everyone.
I run PMS on a dedicated Windows 7 PC that I built a few years ago.
Yes, I know, I’m very badly overdue for an upgrade……like, horribly so. I get it.
The situation I’m writing about here is part of what’s forcing me to finally make the jump to a new box.
That said, I recently noticed that some of my movies (downloaded from internet) that I knew I had - because I’d watched them many times - disappeared from my Plex.
Upon further investigation, I realized that about HALF of my 3,000 movies were gone.
Disappeared from my Plex library. :-0
Further investigation reveals the Hard Drive that about half (maybe 1/3) of my library was stored on, was failing / reallocated sectors & such.
What’s really weird; most of my movies are kept in folders titled for the film.
For example; “The Hangover” movie would be stored as follows:
FOLDER: “The Hangover [2009] 1080p BluRay 5.1”
FILE INSIDE THE FOLDER: “The Hangover [2009] 1080p BluRay 5.1.mp4 (.mkv)”
Any associated .nfo, .srt cover art, (or folders with multiple subtitle files) would also be stored inside the folder, of course.
It appears most - if not all - of the movies that were stored “loose” i.e.; just in the root “MOVIES” directory; most of those are gone.
For movies like “The Hangover” example above that were in their own subfolders; only the .mp4 / .mkv file is gone; the folder still remains, as well as any .srt files, .nfo, .jpg cover art; any other sub-folders or files are STILL THERE. Just the video file; whether .mkv or .mp4 or whatever; that is the only thing that’s missing.
First off; has anyone ever heard of this? If I didn’t know better (maybe I don’t) it sounds like some sort of a virus / hack / malicious actor that deleted half of my movies.
How can the movie FILES disappear, but not the other items in their folders?
Adding insult to injury, I have discovered that - for some very dumb reason - my backups are mirror images of the active directories. I’m still trying to figure out if I incorrectly configured something or what, (obviously I did) but basically; out of ~1500 of the movies that are missing from my Plex, about another 1/2 or 1/3 of those are not backed up anywhere.
Needless to say, I’ve already taken steps to permanently fix that problem.
They’re just movies I’ve downloaded from the internet and 100% replaceable, so I’m not THAT broken up about it, but still… it sucks. I’ve put a lot of time into collecting, labeling, curating my movie collection…
I’ve now quadruple-checked that any & all of my other data is absolutely backed up via multiple methods……
The main question is;
Is there any way I can use Plex to help find out exactly what files are missing / deleted from my Plex?
I already downloaded server logs & it’s nice to see Plex keeps such detailed logs, and for so long. I’m seeing logs going back years.
One big problem is; this has taken place over a long time. At least a few months or more. Obviously I don’t fuss with my movies too much; there are movie files I’ve tossed into my Plex & left there 10 years ago.
Because I don’t have as much time as I’d like to watch movies, I didn’t notice the missing files for months, maybe close to or at a year.
Is there any way I can use Plex logs or any other ideas you guys have to discover even some of what movie files went missing?
Hope this all makes sense and Thanks
