Last summer, I added the first 10 seasons of the Big Bang Theory to Plex’s TV library. My son has watched many if not all of the episodes so I know they are good.
A month ago, a HDHomeRun Extend was added via Plex’s DVR. I setup BBT to record but only keep 5 episodes.
Today, I noticed multiple Plex clients show BBT as only having 5 episodes – season 12 episode 10 (The VCR Illumination) and the last four episodes of season 10.
It appears the DVR purge has “removed” the older ones from Plex but a peek under the hood finds the 10-season folder/file structure is still there.
How can I get the missing episodes back? How can I prevent this other than turning off the 5 episode purge for any TV shows that I already own?
You can’t.
The purge is global - it cannot be restricted to just one library.
It also cannot distinguish between content that was already there and content that was recorded by the DVR feature.
Turn off the episode retention policies for al tv shows
where you don’t want Plex to remove episodes.
I turned it off for BBT but Plex still won’t see the older seasons on disk. I’ve tried doing an Analyze from within the show itself but the older episodes still won’t reappear.
Are you certain that the actual video files are still there?
Try to play them with e.g. VLC, to verify these are valid video files and not just place holders.
Interesting. I’m sure the files were still there when I first noticed this problem (checked via Mac Finder) but they definitely are not now. Only the folders for each season. Thankfully I have backups!
In my thinking, Plex ought to have a source field that it inserts “DVR” for recordings it makes. That also could be useful for creating a view of just DVR shows!
