I have screwed up and am now at a loss. Okay, I have an external drive E: for media files, it has reached its capacity. So, I have another external hard drive, this has media on it, but it also has a lot of non-media and other things on it. I plugged that drive in the other USB port, “F:”
I went to my “Television” category of media and added a folder. I added F:Television. In that folder were some other series I wanted to add.
Suddenly in addition to that folder being added, another location was added, just “F:”
On that F drive there are new shows and movies, but also duplicates of things on the E drive. Any way, PLEX added EVERYTHING. I have bunches of movies and other videos and duplicates and even things I do not own (Like live TV shows) all added to the Television category.
I disconnected the F drive. I went to the Television category and went to edit and removed the “F:Television” folder and saved. It scanned the library but nothing changed. It will absolutely not allow me to remove the “F:” folder though. There is no drive attached, so no files there, but they are all still showing, the F drive can not be removed. I have cleaned bundles, emptied trash, etc. I am about to completely delete Plex and start over with a new account I am so frustrated. Or even try a different media server. I love Plex though and have had it for years, but I am at a loss here.
Stop Plex Media Server
Re-attach the drive.
Make sure it is still the F drive.
Start Plex Media Server
Then see if you can remove F: from the Plex library.
I am on that as we speak, after I tried the first step, it would not even open the edit menu, locked up everything. So I rebooted, helped the wife in the kitchen, and am now waiting for it to finish adding the folder, then I will try to delete the F drive entry
Hey, so I did what you said, not only did it not work, it made it worse, it started adding even more items to the Television menu, like movies and home videos that are elsewhere on the drive but not in the television folder. And it will not allow me to delete “F:” as a path to follow. About ready to ask, how do I completely delete and erase ALL Plex data and everything about Plex so I can reinstall the program, maybe with a different username so there are no “ghost” files and start from scratch
There is no reason to change usernames. That will be of no help.
Before you completely wipe the server…
Stop Plex, Start Plex, wait 3 minutes (to log the startup sequence), then pull the server log files (settings → troubleshooting), and upload the zip file to the thread. Just to check for database corruption or other serious issues.
If all that is OK, delete, then re-create, the tv show library. That will be easier than completely removing Plex and starting over from scratch.
Additional Info re: Database Corruption
If you want to check yourself, pull the log files and unzip. Look in Plex Media Server.log and rollovers, .1.log to .5.log for ERROR entries that mention the database is corrupt or malformed (search for those terms).
If the db is corrupt, it may be possible to fix it, alleviating the need to start over from scratch.
Be forewarned that the logs are very cryptic. You will see other warnings and errors that are not necessarily problems.
Okay, thanks for your help. Something strange is happening for certain. In the last step where I added the F/Television then removed the F: it clearly said it could not remove it and completely locked up.. After doing other things I just rebooted the computer, when I did that, the directory 'F" was indeed removed. So Now I am trying to remove the F:\Television one, it locked up again saying I could not, but when I rebooted, it was also gone. I am waiting for the scan of library files to be finished to see if it removed all the items no longer there… I will let you know
