I would love to see the Scan get smarter. If a scan finds a new copy of a movie, but a previous one is missing… immediately trash the missing one. And vice-versa logic. If a media file is missing during a scan but there are other valid copies of that movie/episode, trash the missing file. The movie would continue to exist in the DB maintaining history and metadata. Same for TV episodes. If the missing media file doesn’t result in that media item completely being removed from Plex, it is safe to trash extra missing versions of media. This would eliminate 99% of my need to manually perform EMPTY TRASH several times a week on my server.
Now this process might actually be more valid as a scheduled SMART TRASH. Where it looks at deleted files and if the episode/movie exists in other copies, then trash it. I’d schedule that every morning.
Even if the AUTOMATICALLY TRASH had a limit where it wouldn’t perform a trash if there are more than 5 files to be deleted. That would require an admin to manually do it. That would be a possible improvement and insurance that an automatic trash isn’t going to remove 100s or 1000s of offline media.
My libraries are hosted on a fast and large home NAS (27TB) and a USB3 cabinet with five spare drives connected to the Plex Server. When the house takes a power hit the USB drive cabinet does not auto-power on. So those drives will be missing until I can manually intervene. Similarly, if my NAS shutdowns due to error or overheating, it will stay down until I intervene. (They power on automatically after power loss)
Because of these very basic things (neither of which I think are that unusual) I cannot choose “Empty trash automatically after every scan”. A scan after a power loss would result in many thousands of missing episodes and movies. Automatically emptying the trash would mean they would all add back in new, unwatched when the NAS came back.
Years ago I did have the NAS down and all the movies & TV were marked for trash because the background scan occurred while I was working on it. I was trying the EMPTY TRASH AUTO option back then and I caught it before it dumped my entire library.
So I manually Empty Trash multiple times a week.
It seems such a basic concern, I wonder am I missing something?
What do others do who don’t have fixed media drives in their Plex server? Is everybody who uses sonarr/sickbeard or Plex DVR emptying trash manually several days a week as well? Those products will create multiple versions, replacing low resolution with higher when able.
Sadly my Samsung TV app (development stopped years ago) can’t handle missing media versions. If there are multiple media choices and any of them are missing, every selection just sits there thinking and thinking and never plays. I have to go and manually empty trash. Then pull the media up fresh on Samsung Plex and then it will play.
