i have a setup here, that has been mostly hands off for a couple years now. i’ll occasionaly need to move a file here or there, or check this, that or do an update.
but recently, i have 3 newly added tv shows that plex refuses to see the pilot episode of. plex sees the episode 2, 3, 4, etc in the directory but will not see episode 1 in the directory.
as you can see plex only sees 5 episodes. and no amount of rescanning the library fixes it. i am required to do the plex dance to get plex to see episode 1.
ive disabled “scan my library automatically” and “run a partial scan when changes are detected”
“scan my library periodcally” was not enabled in my case.
then i went to the TV library and initiated a manual scan, the missing episode 1’s were not found even though they still reside in the directory
i then went and initiated a scan on all libraries, which resulted in the same. plex still doesnt see episode 1’s
then, i moved the show and all episodes out of the plex directory, initiated a library scan in which plex removed the show, then moved the show back into plex media directory, initiated another scan and plex did indeed find all episodes of the show.
These settings can only prevent the issue from occuring when adding new files.
They cannot fix the issue retroactively. For that you still need the Plex Dance, as you have found.
ive done as you suggested, and re-enabled “run partial scan when changes are detected” with “scan my library automatically” disabled. and it seems like there is no auto scanning going on now.
i then went to see if i could find out more about these particular options. and according to https://support.plex.tv/articles/200289526-library/#toc-1 it seems my suspicions may be correct. if “scan my library automatically” is disabled, then “run partial scan when changes are detected” will also be disabled, because it depends on the former.
do we know what may be happening to cause this issue of missing files?
i have a hunch; because most of my media is automated, sometimes things tend to happen in batches when scheduled. perhaps when plex sees a change and starts the scan, during said scan another file(s) gets loaded into the media directory and plex doesnt notice it… and as we have found, the only way to rectify once this has occurred is with plex dance rescanning after the fact will not retroactively fix the missed file(s). i hope that makes sense.
The “usual suspects” of automation software can trigger a Plex library scan if you tell them so. They usually know best when to trigger it.
You should use this option if they provide it.
What you must avoid, is to start a library scan when one file is still only partially stored in your media folder.
If you can, use a folder outside of the library media folder to prepare the files, like downloading, converting, renaming, remuxing etc.
If this folder is still on the same physical drive as the media folder, moving the media to their final place is pretty much instant.
i’d like to keep some kind of automated import, but I now know some things to look out for. I’ll also see if there are some options in my automation software that may help as well.
that is a great tip on the moving of files from temp dir to plex media directory.
