Most desperate man in the world. gurus please help!

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

:face_with_symbols_over_mouth::rage::weary:MICROSOFT TECH SUPPORT DELETED MY ENTIRE EXTERNAL DRIVE!!! :poop::scream::dizzy_face:

I NEED HELP SALVAGING FROM PLEX. ALL MY KIDS PHOTOS AND VIDEOS STILL SHOW UP IN PLEX BUT I BELIEVE ONLY AS A PREVIEW OR THUMBNAIL. WHEN I CLICK ON THEM THEY SAY IT CANNOT BE FOUND. ULTIMATELY i AM ASKING IS THERE ANY WAY TO SALVAGE THE THUMBNAILS TO A FILE THAT I CAN CONVERT SOMEHOW LATER BACK IN JPG OR PNG FILES? I AM AFRAID ONE DAY PLEX WILL SCAN OR UPDATE AND THEY WILL BE LOST FOREVER.

PLEX YOU ARE MY LAST HOPE!!! EVEN RECOVERY SOFTWARE COULDNā€™T GET THEM BACK I AM SO SAD.

SAVE ME AND ILL STAY A MEMBER FOR LIFE!!!

2

Disconnect the external drive immediately and donā€™t write on it anymore.
Bring it to a data recovery expert.

You can also try your luck yourself with file ā€˜undeleteā€™ software, but be forewarned that with improper use you may end up doing even more damage to your data.

Disable library updates in Plex under
Settings - Server - Library -
ā€˜Scan my library automaticallyā€™
and
ā€˜Scan my library periodicallyā€™
and
ā€˜Empty trash automatically after every scanā€™
clear all those checkboxes.

You can go later spelunking in the folder
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server\Media\localhost
for files ending with .jpg
However, these files are only of a small resolution/quality and are only still photos.
So your primary goal must be to get the data on your mobile harddisk restored.

3

1st step, disconnect that drive. Do not attempt to use it. The more you write stuff to it the more likely you are to permanently erase something.

No you can not convert back from thumbnails.

Do NOT empty your trash and make sure Plex does not do this automatically

4

I was able to recover all my media photos with full resolution by hunting down the folder:

C:\Users\MYNAME\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\PhotoTranscoder

For anyone else who need to know thisā€¦

I first copied the Photo Transcoder folder and left the one I found still in its place. Then I copied it to a new drive to be able to attack it. After opening the new copied folder it came up with a ton of folders with double digit labels. But I could see pictures in them. So I sorted them in file explorer but putting a * in the search box and then sorted them by file type. Once it did that I cut them all and pasted them into a new file on another drive. Now I just have to go through them and put them in their respective folders and rename them, but small price to pay to have my memories back. Especially after 2 months of searching and looking at file recovery programs listed in the $100-$300 range I was pleased to see that my Plex Pass membership of only $5 a month saved my lifes work. I recommend to everyone save all your stuff to PLEX and know just like me you will be able to recover it easier and cheaper than any recovery program on the market. I love you PLEX!!! Please reach out to me if you want this story on your website and send me some gear to support you guys. I am officially a PLEX member for life!!!

Jeff

5

Sorry, but these files are not in the full resolution of the original photos.
And your video files are still lost.

6

My pics are full HD pics all recovered via my method. As for the movies, well that is the beauty of bookmarks and torrents.

7

Be happy for me Otto :hushed:

8

Hehe, I am. Happy plexing! :wink:

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9

Thank you couldnā€™t have started down the right path without you!!!

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10

For the next time: make a backup of what is important to you!

11

Amen!

As the old IT saying goes: If you only have data stored in one place, consider it already deleted.

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12

If you only knew the whole story man. Im not novice. This is my 3rd pc in 4 months and over 200 calls with MS. Got so bad I sent the CEO an email and have been working with Senior engineers and this last thing they did when the saved the ISO file for win 10 gave no warning about anything deleting off anywhere but it wiped 2 USB drives and my external. Trust me I backup. Now if only HP would pony up and make it right since MS can do nothing right then I might be ok. But PLEX saved me and only took 1 forum email and 15 min compared to the 4 month tour of hell MS and HP put me through. Thank you though guys.

50DDE75ADB44425EB6E6F817D268F86A.png708Ɨ1 83 Bytes

13

Ok sorry for being a smarty pants, I donā€™t know about what you have going on with MS and I donā€™t want to judge you.
Still, take it as a crash test for your backup strategy. Obviously it failed, irregardless of what happened. It could happen again.
So for something as valuable as family pictures/videos I would suggest either making a backup which is not ā€œliveā€, like an external drive which lives in a cupboard and is synced regularly or even making an ā€œoff-siteā€ backup at a trustable cloud space provider. The latter is what I am doing with my irreplacable files.

14

Yeah itā€™s been hard to find a cloud storage that holds you know 3 TB of personal information and photos Iā€™m not gonna pay hundred dollars for something like that but do you have any recommendations on what a good services I think I have like six clouds at this point and itā€™s getting confusing Iā€™d rather just have one big one. No comments from the peanut gallery on that one laugh out loud. I would like to consolidate at some point but I feel an NAS is gonna be what I need to save up for

15

Gsuite by google. 8-10 ā‚¬/$ per month for unlimited storage.

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