When emptying the trash, PMS is supposed to remove unavailable items from the library. However, I suspect that this is only happening if the item is a movie/show entity and not happening for files associated with a movie/show. What I’ve been seeing recently is that when I replace a file for a movie, the old file remains associated with the movie and is shown under Get Info as unavailable. It never gets removed no matter how many maintenance cycles pass (when empty trash enabled) or how many times I run empty trash manually.
Emptying trash only removes media that has not been found after a scan. There will be a large trashcan icon on the poster. It does not remove just because it is unavailable.
UNLESS you have the server set to automatically empty the trash on a library scan:
I don’t recommend this setting if you have storage that goes missing from time to time - unless re-discovery and re-population is something you enjoy… and I’m almost certain you wouldn’t enjoy it.
If you really do want to dump the trash (with automatic trash dump disabled) you can:
and if that’s not working - Houston? We have a problem.
You could also have your media so poorly named and structured Plex doesn’t know whether to scratch it’s watch or wind it’s @$$ - and in that case… better get to fixing it:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/media-preparation/
In any case - log files will lead us to the truth (hopefully):
Log Files:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/
Drag zip file to message window and drop it.
Sorry, for whatever reason I didn’t get an email this was replied to. Thank you for the replies. To clarify what I’m talking about, here’s a screenshot. I do have the “Empty trash automatically after every scan” option enabled.
The item showing as unavailable has been like that for over a month. Needless to say the empty trash process has run multiple times over.
I downloaded the logs as you suggested and the Analysis log shows that it can’t access the file.
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.310 [1848] DEBUG - Analyzing media parts for item 48605 (A Christmas Story Live!): 238047,199842
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.310 [1848] DEBUG - [ID 242125] Media part analysis: \–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-720p.mkv
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.310 [1848] DEBUG - [MI] Opening input file: “\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-720p.mkv”
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.310 [1848] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Opening ‘\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-720p.mkv’ for reading
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.481 [1848] DEBUG - [MI] * a300fa27cf322ab20ab451a3171c2f64dd35fdfd [mkv h264/aac] Duration: 8002611ms, 1280x720 (1.777778) 23.976fps, bitrate=3457kbps, audio channels=2, optimizedForStreaming=0 (\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-720p.mkv)
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.481 [1848] DEBUG - Updating metadata item (save) (A Christmas Story Live!) with ID 48605
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.622 [1848] DEBUG - [MI] Closing input file: \–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-720p.mkv
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.622 [1848] DEBUG - Updating part with ID=242125 [\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-720p.mkv]
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.685 [1848] DEBUG - [ID 203634] Media part analysis: \–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.700 [1848] DEBUG - [MI] Opening input file: “\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv”
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.700 [1848] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Opening ‘\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv’ for reading
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.731 [1848] ERROR - Exception analyzing media file ‘\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv’ (Could not parse \–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv (error=-2): No such file or directory)
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.731 [1848] DEBUG - Updating part with ID=203634 [\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv]
Plex Media Scanner.3.log:May 14, 2018 08:24:34.429 [7832] DEBUG - Adding subdirectory for scanner: “\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)”
Plex Media Scanner.3.log:May 14, 2018 08:24:39.101 [7832] DEBUG - * Scanning directory \–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) (parent: yes)
Plex Media Scanner.3.log:May 14, 2018 08:24:39.148 [7832] DEBUG - Adding file for scanner: “\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-720p.mkv”
Plex Media Scanner.3.log:May 14, 2018 08:24:39.289 [7832] DEBUG - File ‘\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv’ didn’t exist, can’t skip.
Plex Media Scanner.3.log:May 14, 2018 08:24:39.414 [7832] DEBUG - * Scanning A Christmas Story Live! (2017)
Plex Media Scanner.3.log:May 14, 2018 08:24:39.414 [7832] DEBUG - Looking for path match for [\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-720p.mkv]
Plex Media Server.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.044 [7628] ERROR - Error opening file ‘\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv’ - No such file or directory (2)
Plex Media Server.log:May 14, 2018 08:35:15.919 [8992] ERROR - Error opening file ‘\–REMOVED–\A Christmas Story Live! (2017)\A Christmas Story Live! (2017) - WEBDL-480p.mkv’ - No such file or directory (2)
@BigWheel said:
Emptying trash only removes media that has not been found after a scan. There will be a large trashcan icon on the poster. It does not remove just because it is unavailable.
So, I think the problem is: what qualifies as “media” in your statement? I believe the problem is that “media” qualifies only as a library item (or poster as you say), not a media file (or media part as listed in the log file). As you can see from the screenshot in my previous comment, I replaced a lower quality file with a higher quality file, but Plex refuses to remove the lower quality file and instead leaves it marked as unavailable. Because of this, I have an ever-growing number of library items that show up under “Duplicates” even though there are not duplicates – it’s just that Plex won’t let go of the old file name.
I can manually click “Delete Files” and it will remove it, but I’d rather the automatic cleanup (empty trash) handle this.
I have the same problem, one of my hard drive crashed. All of the content on that hard drive are showing unavailable. I have tried all of the above. Only way is to manually delete the content one by one. Anyone out there that has a fix on this?
Any fixes besides manually going to each file and deleting the unavailable file from the UI?
I’m seeing the same problem. This is a huge waste of human effort and where computers shine. This needs a fix!
I have this exact same issue for nearly a year now. I would love a fix for this. I read that our db might be corrupted, that is why it isn’t removing when emptying trash. But restarting from fresh is a huge pain when this should be solutionable from Plex’s side.
Hope something gets mentioned so I can just choose to start over or not.
i have the same problem.
Check librarie folders.
Path has non-existent folders. delete it.
expierence the same issue.
Seems it is connected to the scanner not working properly (for me) as some librarys cannot be scanned anymore… Hangs forever scanning.
Same issue here, as well. This has been a problem for quite some time, probably as long as a year for me.
The solution I found was removing a few folders from the library that no longer existed. Once those folders were gone, Plex started correcting removing files automatically from my library.
Wanted to say thank you, this worked for me. I have been racking my brain on why this was happening and I completed forgot that I recently moved drives and forgot to delete the old path entries.
Awesome! I’m glad to hear it worked for you too!
Well, i had the similar issue seems like i had a Symbolic Link for another Movie in there… after moving that symbolic link … it marked the other one which i intended to delete as “Delete-able” and i just used Empty Trash after placing the symbolic link file back…
Thanks Hardywo