Hey everyone, so due to an unfortunate situation, I had to reinstall my OS without being able to backup my plex server config. I had all of my media configured via symlinks. After the OS reinstall, these symlinks still function perfectly (they’re setup with relative paths and on the same drive), but plex just doesn’t see them. Even if I generate a new symlink via the same method that worked before reinstalling my OS, Plex can’t see it. I ensured that both the source file and directories containing the symlinks have full permissions, and that my own account is the owner of the folders (with “everyone” having full permission). I’m really at a loss here, I don’t want to give up this functionality but I’m running out of ideas. Any help would be much appreciated.
And to be clear, plex can find media that’s actually in these directories just fine, it’s just the symlinks that don’t work.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m mostly just baffled that it doesn’t work despite working with the exact same setup in the past. I’d love to get to the bottom of that. I can try hard links if I must (can those be renamed different from the source?)
Yes, they can have different names than the source. Just make sure they are consistent with Plex’s naming guidelines.
Also, hard links only work with files. If you’re linking directories, use directory junctions as @Xhaka suggested above. The command is very similar, just substitute /j for /h: mklink /j link_name source_dir
Is there a convenient way for me to convert all my existing symlinks to hard links? Trying to avoid essentially redoing my whole library (when it’s already setup via symlinks with appropriate naming and all).
I’m not sure how convenient it would be for you, but you could create a batch file to iterate over a directory and do the conversion; a quick Google search of ‘windows convert symlinks to hard links’ returned an example which may work.
I’m surprised that symlinks worked for you previously; I just tested and confirmed that they do not on my Windows 10 test server. Can you confirm that your symlinks look like this:
Alright I’ll look into that more (I also made that google search and tried the command most likely at the same link you saw but it didn’t seem to work, I’ll just have to actually use my brain and figure it out lmao).
And yep I just double checked for you, they’re actual symlinks that worked for me before. I’m just as confused as you are now.
Thanks for confirming that. My own (and others’) experience has been that it doesn’t work like that. Perhaps it’s not an immutable rule though.
I have next to no experience with anime, but your naming may be a bit off. For normal TV series, the expectation is that file names include the season and episode in SxxEyy format. I tested here using your format and it worked (matched as My Hero Academia). I only bring it up since it varies from what Plex recommends.
Also, do you need to link each file? If your source directories are laid out correctly, you could just link the top-level folder. So, if the source looks like this:
C:\Media\TV Shows\ <--- This name is not important
Boku No Hero\
Season 01\
Boku No Hero - S01E01.mkv
...
You could just link to the top-level directory for your library: mklink /j "C:\SomeOtherPath\TV Shows" "C:\Media\TV Shows"
And add C:\SomeOtherPath\TV Shows as the source for your library. Not knowing how your source directories are laid out or what your motivations are for using links instead of the source directly, I’m not sure if this would work for you. But linking higher-level directories rather than individual files would be easier, if you can do that instead.
There’s not a finer area of the world, as far as I’m concerned. But I am biased .
.