Help me understand why missing files result in those albums disappearing from the music library.
I have MC24 on a Win10 based media center. The library is in the default location in the user directory on the C: drive. The music data files are all on a different drive dedicated to music, the F: drive. That F: drive’s file system corrupted and I lost the music data. The backup of that data is old enough that after restoring from the backup disk I will need to rip some CDs and I want to know downloads I own are all accounted for.
The plan was use the Smart list ‘Audio – Task – Missing Files’ to make a list of files missing after restore, export that and use it as a checklist to locate CDs and re-rip missing files.
At one point while rebuilding F: drive when all the audio data was gone running ‘Audio – Task – Missing Files’ produced a long list of missing files, as expected. At that time MC showed all my albums and cover art apparently unaware over on F: the data was gone. However after reformatting F: and restoring the 90% of my music data off the backup the plan has gone off the rails. The library shows 837 albums and 9715 files. The files present play fine. What’s confusing is that now running ‘Audio – Task – Missing Files’ returns 0 missing files. Manually checking some recently ripped CDs shows their entries in the library have disappeared.
I also have MC24 on a Win10 laptop with a local to that machine library and music data files. Experimenting with MC24 not running I renamed an artist folder in the music data directory to hide the file from MC24 by breaking the link. When restarted MC24 no longer showed that artist’s album. Smart list ‘Audio – Task – Missing Files’ did not report the files missing. Next after MC24 was closed I changed the album’s directory back to the original name. When restarted MC24 again showed that album as present.
So it appears MC is checking links to its content and dynamically remaking itself accordingly. Please explain how and when this is working. I would prefer it to be a little ‘dumber’ and if a file or files goes missing keep the album/songs in the library with broken links to alert me some of my digital property has gone missing. Can MC be set to behave like that?
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Topic: Does the library constantly rebuild its links? (Read 800 times)