I have a Plex server ( Version 1.94.1.155-f1e7f457) running on a laptop (Windows 11 Pro).
My medias are hosted on 2 Synology NAS (DS218+ running on DSM7.1.1)
From time to time, when I want to display my Movies with the ‘Date added’, it shows old movies first (not in a specific order).
I have to play with the Movies library option to get the correct display, but the issue is coming back after some time.
I checked on my NAS, the files date stamp are good.
If your media are stored on network file shares (your exact use case) or on external hard drives, or even on cloud storage (madness), then you should
DISable the checkbox “Empty trash automatically after every scan”
under
Settings - Server - Library
Because Plex can mark certain files as “unavailable”, if the NAS or the external drive was too slow to react when the file was requested by the server.
(Particularly, if you let the hard drives spin down their platters when idle.)
The above mentioned checkbox causes unavailable items to get ousted immediately. And that includes at least their “Added at” date, but sometimes also manually added or edited metadata. Upon the next library scan the ousted media files are added again to the library, because they were never actually gone.
The “Added at” date in Plex does only reflect when the file was added to the Plex library.
There is only one case where Plex will consider the file date as the “Added at” date: if the library scan was performed during the course of the Plex library creation.
