Woke up the other day to discover that I seem to have lost all the custom metadata in my Plex library, so now my Library looks like a mess.
I spent countless hours tediously perfecting my 2,100+ title library, particularly with using Sorting Titles and custom Posters.
I run Server updates regularly, but otherwise have made no material changes to my setup at all. My server runs on a Windows 10 laptop connected via Ethernet to my network.
I tried following the steps to Repair a Corrupt Database from Plex’s support library to no avail.
Any idea what could have caused or, more importantly, how to fix it? Unfortunately I also discovered that System Restore Points on my machine had somehow gotten turned off, so I’m unable to go back in time to a known-good state.
Hi @thinksinc - I can’t necessarily help you with how it happened. It sounds to me like you may have an infection on the machine, based on the fact that System Restore has been turned off. That’s a classic Ransomware trick.
However as to getting running again… Do you backup your Plex program data location??
Have checked my machine for infections, I don’t think it’s that. I rarely go to the web on it, I just run Windows Updates and Plex on it.
@OttoKerner I did try restoring the Database from the Scheduled Tasks backups, but it looks like those only go back a few weeks, and apparently my database has been corrupt for a bit longer than that unfortunately.
I ended up biting the bullet and spent several hours today fixing hundreds of Sorting Titles and Posters by hand again. I’ll keep a closer watch on my Library and immediately restore from Scheduled Task backups if I ever see anything questionable happening again.
I might suggest that you look into any means possible to start backing up your App data location on a daily basis. Perhaps using the built-in Windows Backup service to an external HD.
I learnt some years ago how important it is to backup this location, and I ended up going a little crazy and taking incremental backups every 3 hours!
That way I can restore Plex back to many different points in time should I need.
Well, it happened again. I opened Plex as usual to find that all of my custom Sorting Titles were gone. Since Plex only creates backups going back 1-2 weeks, I didn’t notice the Library was corrupt again until it was too late and all of the backups were of the Library with missing metadata. I’m not spending another full day fixing all of my metadata again since this will likely keep happening, and I don’t know why.
Unfortunately I’m going to have to abandon Plex and switch over to something like Infuse. Oh well.
