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Author Topic: Losing networked files when offline  (Read 1125 times)

Piblokto

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Losing networked files when offline
« on: May 21, 2014, 08:58:57 am »

I store all of my video and some of my audio on a Synology NAS accessed by ethernet.  The NAS switches off automatically at night and re-starts automatically in the morning.  This setup has been in place without problem for a few years.

Recently an issue has arisen where all of my video titles are lost from the library.  I re-imported them, re-set all of the tags, and the next day they were gone again - two days running.  I have now found that this also applies to the networked audio files and have traced it to the fact that it happens when the NAS switches off at night.  In the morning the audio files are back but the video library is empty.

This has not happened before, previously these files would be showing in the library but not be accessible.  Presumably this is a change made in a recent update?

The drive with the audio files was set to auto-import but the video drive was not - is this the reason why they did not reappear?  Re-importing a large library of files each day seems a strange way to structure the system to me.  Also, I don't really want to set it to auto-import the video drive as I want to select what I import.

This is a real pain - I have had to go through a lot of tags again each day, now changing their settings so that they all write to file and re-importing them again, and am unable to check what is in the library at times when the NAS is offline.  Can I put things back to the previous arrangement?

Win7 x64, MC19.0.135 (set to auto update to latest version)
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glynor

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Re: Losing networked files when offline
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2014, 09:29:10 am »

This has not happened before, previously these files would be showing in the library but not be accessible.  Presumably this is a change made in a recent update?

Unlikely, but possible that something in there broke.  More likely that something changed in the way your NAS is mounted/unmounted when it shuts off (or the way Windows exposes it to client applications).

Turn off Fix Broken Links under Auto-Import settings.  That will stop it from happening.

What is happening is that with Fix Broken Links set to Yes or Yes (Protect Network Files), MC will remove any missing files from the Library.  With the special "protect network files" setting it tries to protect files that it thinks are on network shares that are missing, rather than actually deleted.  However, there's only so much the logic can do for this (and it could probably use some tweaking).  If the NAS volume exists, and Windows can browse the share, but it shows up empty, then MC will remove everything.

At some point when going down (or perhaps starting back up) the NAS share is showing up empty.

Now, on the upside, MC should "fix itself".  When it removes files, it doesn't fully remove them.  As long as the files come back in the same exact spot, if you just run Auto-Import manually, it'll go through and re-add them by "undeleting" them from the Library, rather than really re-importing them.  That means that all metadata should be preserved.

But, better to not have it happen in the first place.  If you're regularly turning off your NAS, it will be better to disable the Fix Broken Links setting, which will stop that feature entirely.
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