I have my main Plex server pointing to a raid 6 NAS share. All good there…
As a backup, I synchronize all the media nightly to a Removable USB drive plugged into the back of another NAS.
On this second NAS i have another instance of Plex Media Server installed, pointing to the “synced” data on the external USB drive.
This way, if i lose the drive, or somehow the primary Plex media server has a problem, I can fail over to the secondary setup, which is exactly the same.
QUESTION; I am afraid that if/when the USB drive becomes unplugged, or perhaps a cable gets accidentally pulled out of the back of it, that Plex will start flushing it’s knowledge of these episodes down the drain.
Is there a way I can prevent Plex from “cleaning up” if it sees that the entire USB drive is disconnected, BUT allow it to still clean up as part of the normal activity (episodes removed, etc.)?
I’m Running the latest version of Plex Media Server.
Usually Plex will not consider individual items as deleted, if it cannot find the entire drive.
That being said, your most immediate “fix” will be to disable Settings > [Server Name] > Library > Empty trash automatically after every scan. This way, even if Plex cannot find your media and considers it to be deleted, it’ll keep the record in your library (until you manually trigger Empty Trash for that particular library).
So it sounds like you’re saying that I shouldn’t have to do anything. If the drive is disconnected it will sit tight until it’s back online. Then, once it knows it has a media drive, it will consider removing and generating trash.
That’s the theory.
I think disabling automatically emptying the trash is always a good idea with external media. There’s some grey states between the drive being online or offline… e.g. if you connect (or disconnect) the drive while a scan is in process.
