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[CalJake]

I never realized how much I relied on "date imported" to sort my music library until I started have issues with this value.  I use Media Center to rip all my music from CDs, and then the FLAC files are immediately imported into Media Center.  So created and imported days should be the same.  For some reason, I noticed earlier in the week that albums I know I ripped many months or years ago (from my memory and the "Date Created" tag) started appearing in a library view I have that displays albums imported in the last month.  I figured odd, but not a big deal - I'll just restore from a library backup I have from a month ago (by the way, stored on a separate hard-drive).  This fixed the albums with incorrect import dates assigned within the last month, but if the incorrect import date was more than a month ago, it didn't fix those.  Usually it's not the entire album that has the wrong import date, but just random cuts.  And then all the wrong import date values are the same wrong day. 

Any idea why this happened, how to prevent, and more importantly, how to fix?  As I mentioned, the oldest library back up I have is from a month ago, and restoring from that didn't fix the issue.  I did create a new data field, where the date imported = date created, which I can use, but that doesn't have the convenience of accurate "date imported" for sorting natively in Media Center.

[RoderickGI]

If this is happening to some only Tracks from Albums, and those Tracks are in the same directory as the other Album Tracks, check the health of the hard drive they are on immediately. I use Hard Disk Sentinel for that purpose. There are plenty of other tools.

The most likely reason for this to be happening is that you have Auto Import running in the background, and you have the setting "Fix Broken Links" set to "Yes". The hard drive is failing, and some files aren't available, so when Auto Import runs MC removes them from the Library. Later, the hard drive works again for those sectors, or the files have been moved away from bad sectors and are visible again, and so MC imports the files again, giving them a new [Date Imported].

If this has been happening for over a month, I suggest that checking that hard drive is far more important than fixing the [Date Imported]. You should also immediately (now) change the "Fix Broken Links" setting to "No" so that Tracks are not removed from the Library. Then set up a Smartlist or View to display files that MC thinks are missing. If any files are missing in future, that sort of confirms a hard drive problem.


Fixing incorrect [Date Imported] values is a difficult thing to do. A search of the forum will find many discussions. But worry about that after you have confirmed your media files are safe.

[CalJake]

Thanks for the thorough reply RoderickGI.  I do not have any indication at all that there's a problem with the health of the hard drives.  Music files are stored on a Synology NAS using Synology Hybrid RAID with data protection for 1-drive fault tolerance.  The system runs a S.M.A.R.T quick test every single day, and a thorough S.M.A.R.T. extended test every three days.  I'm manually re-running the extended test now.  All the logs, 872 entries over two years, report the S.M.A.R.T. test results as 'healthy.'  Looking at drive statistics, there has not been a single drive reconnection, bad sector, or drive re-identification in 26,663 hours of on time.  I run LAN speed test and am always streaming 4K movies from the NAS without problems, so there doesn't appear to be any performance issues.  I'll see if I can figure out how to run Hard Disk Sentinel on the drives too.   

Media files are backed up manually to an external USB drive manually weekly, so I'm not concerned about losing the media.

I did have 'fix broken links' set to 'yes (protect files on missing drives).'  I've set that to 'no', and I've unchecked "Run auto-import in background.  I can make a smartlist or a custom view, but I'm not sure how to designate files MC thinks are missing.

Thanks.

[RoderickGI]

It sounds like you have the hard drive health issue covered. Hard Disk Sentinel pretty much uses the same SMART data, with a little bit of extra checking, I think. Best for individual drives rather than NAS drives in an array. I'm not sure it will even run against a NAS in an array, although they probably have a version that will.

You can view files that MC thinks are missing on any View or Smartlist just by entering this expression in the search field: [=ismissing([filename])]=1

You can also enter that expression as a "Custom" rule in any View to limit the View to only show missing files. Copy the Audio "Files" View (drag the Files rule up to the Audio heading, drop and select Copy) and add that rule, then you can check whenever the situation occurs, as long as MC hasn't re-imported the files yet.

You can also see visually in any View that has the "image (small thumbnail)" column. Missing files have a red circle with a white horizontal bar through it, as per the attached image.


I can't think of any reason other than the file going missing for the [Date Imported] changing. It is a system managed, non-editable field. It only gets set when a file is imported. Of course, if you have accidentally removed files from the Library, perhaps when you were deliberately removing some files, and the file selection included more than you thought, that would do it.

There is another setting in Auto Import, "Ignore files previously removed from library". If that was unchecked, files that went missing and were removed from the Library manually or via "Fix Broken Links" would be re-imported when they are found later. Perhaps tick that checkbox setting now. Then if you run Auto Import manually MC won't re-import files that went missing and you may be able to identify what is going on.


It would still be worth searching the forum for discussion on [Date Imported] as there have been a lot of discussions about it, updating it, why you can't, etc. Maybe there is a hint in those threads that I can't remember.

[DJLegba]

As you have ruled out hard drive problems, the next thing to look at would be network issues. Could be on the computer running MC, the NAS, or anywhere in between. Now that you have disabled "Fix broken links" you're not likely to see the imported date continue to change.