So I deleted something from my “other videos” but did not empty the trash yet - and discovered I actually need the item I deleted… after reading all kinds of supposed help I find none of it helpful - I don’t need extreme details or long explanations - just a simple WHERE DO I FIND ITEMS IN THE TRASH please & thank you! There’s no easy way/method to just click and find the trash bin - thanks in advance!
The trash isn’t like a normal computer’s trash. It’s… well, Plex itself has a reference that remembers the file’s original location. If that file is missing for ANY reason (you deleted it within Plex, or outside of Plex in your OS’s file manager), then Plex will mark it’s reference or “record” of the metadata associated with it as missing. This metadata is stuff like title, summary, description, genre, poster images, etc. Allowing Plex to “empty trash” will then remove these items from its database, and it will basically be as if you never had the movie/show in the first place.
The main or ONLY reason for not “emptying trash” automatically in Plex as soon as you deleted the original file is if you have a storage location for your media on an unreliable source. If you have an external hard drive, (or internal that hibernates) every time the drive spins down to save energy, if Plex to think that the drive is gone and all media on it is gone, then empyting trash would delete all all this metadata and any reference to the movies/shows. The next time the drive spins up, Plex would go to all the work of adding it back into your library as if it is the first time it saw it.
Unfortunately, if an item is gone such that Plex wants to “empty trash”, then there is no method WITHIN PLEX to recover the file. You must go to your base OS and hope that you have a recycle bin of some kind that hasn’t been emptied yet to try to recover it.
Depending on the device holding your content, you might be able to get into it and restore from its trash, outside of Plex.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
