NAS Plex libraries in some cases are populated from other systems, When the copy occurs the added date in the Plex library is updated. For some reason my preferred copy program, Carbon Copy Cloner (from iMac to NAS), sometimes chooses to completely copy over the files in a library again. This causes the added dates to be updated which causes chaos. A file which was created in 2006 shows as just having been added to the server, even though it has been there for years.
If there were an option to sort by file creation date then then even if your media files were all lost and had to be restored they would still show in the same order when sorted by the creation date - the order they were created. Otherwise the added date order is random.
There are some posts about editing the sql database, but that’s a risky option.
Looks like QNAP just has modification date rather than creation date, which in most cases (downloaded file content) would be the same.
I had to wipe the disks on a Synology NAS and completely rebuild and re-import all of my media into Plex. The imported files have the correct modified and created dates with last access date being the date of the import.
As a consequence all of the files are shown as added on the same date. It is impossible to find, say, my home videos from 2015 as they are all tagged with the date 2022.
Correction. I do see that if I do a search by year I see a list of years in the pulldown. However a file which has creation and modified dates of 2018 shows up the year list as 1970. The library settings are Plex Video Files Scanner, Personal Media. Some files may
There’s already an existing suggestion thread discussing the option to add file creation (and/or modification) dates as sort options. I suggest you comment/vote in that thread in order to avoid distracting/dispersing votes.
