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[madmelmon]

Hey y'all, did a search but didn't see anything. Apologies if I'm repeating anything.

I lost a lot of my CDs years ago (long story) but I still had the MP3s for a lot of them ripped to my computer. I've been playing those MP3s and slowly rebuilding my physical CD collection.

So here's what happens: I don't delete the MP3s right away. To keep the old and new files separate, I change the MP3 disc number to 2, then load the new files and mark them as disc one. This has been uneventful the vast majority of the time.

But sometimes, when I hit F6 to move everything to its place, everything just...vanishes, The new AND the old files are just gone. MC27 sees them when it's time to move them, but once they're moved, they vanish. Not just the files, but the whole folder. When I delete files from the program it doesn't delete the image file in the folder, so the folder remains. Not with this. Poof.

It's happened twice now. What's especially weird is that I was doing two albums at the same time. One album's perfectly fine. After a few seconds, the other album started displaying the red "File Not Found" icon (see image.) And again, it's not just the new files, it's ALL of them, even the image.

And the files are nowhere to be found. Doing a general search on the computer yields nothing. I even turned on the invisibles and poked around in the guts of the machine, including the trash. Nothing.

Any ideas? This is surreal. I'm backing everything up, so it's not like I lose anything permanently, but this is...off.

[madmelmon]

I loaded the album again, and when I hit F6 to move it into place, it gave me this message. I went ahead and clicked yes, everything worked as it should and the files are in place.

[wer]

Welcome to the forums madmelmon.

First, regarding your second post, there's a bug in RMCF that can cause that message box to appear even when it shouldn't.  So the fact you got that message may or may not be significant. I don't know if that bug has been fixed yet, especially on Mac.

The other screenshot doesn't tell enough, unfortunately.  The [Filename] column is important, and that is missing.

More importantly, we would need to see a screenshot of your RM&CF (F6) dialog, as you have filled it out. The preview on the right will show what's happening (or rather, what's about to happen).  Show the entire dialog window please.

My guess is that you're using the tool wrong, by selecting the "Update database..." option. If you actually keep reading that option, you'll see that it says at the end "no file rename, move, or copy". That means it will not actually move your file. It updates the database to a new location, the file isn't there, so you get the broken link icon.  That is probably what is happening. That would be consistent with the result you describe, except the files probably aren't actually gone, they're elsewhere, you just don't know where.

To actually move the file correctly, you would have to select the option that says "Rename (move files if directory changes)".

If you use the RMCF tool correctly, it will work. If you do the wrong thing with it, you can shoot yourself in the foot.  You cannot specifically tell it to delete files, but if you're creative you can do things almost as bad, such as moving them to a place where you'll have to search the entire disk to find them, or renaming them all to the exact same thing, which would effectively delete every file but one.  So be careful.

So that's a guess. Only you know what you did.  Post a screenshot of what you're doing in the tool if you want me to make a better guess.

[madmelmon]

Thanks for the response! Below is a screenshot of the T6 window.

Just in the interest of completeness, a little detail:

I'm using the Rename (moves files if directory changes) option in the F6 window, and always have. I haven't used the Copy and Update Database option, since I want to move them, not copy them.

Everything is stored on a hard drive named CPL593H in a folder called Audio. The [tk] I have in the filename window is a field I created that puts the disc number, track number, title and time in one line. It results in a file name that looks like this:

1.01 - Tanz Debil (3_23)

There's nothing especially complicated about it, and it seems to have worked fine on the other 2500 albums I have loaded. The disappearance has only happened on one other album (Steve Winwood's Back In The High Life) and neither seem to have anything weird in terms of special characters.

The new files are Apple Lossless, and the old files were MP3. Apple takes the file extension into account when naming them, so you can have the same name on two files with no conflict, so long as they have different extensions.

This is a weird one. I'm familiar with Apple's stuff to the point that I can completely disassemble and reassemble any of their machines, tweak coding in system files, etc. But I'm not sure what could be happening here.

Thanks again!

[madmelmon]

For some reason, the photo didn't upload. Trying again:

[madmelmon]

Ah yes, one more thing: it's never done it a second time. I loaded the exact same files (copied from the backup) and did the same thing, and everything is fine now.

[wer]

I mistyped in my earlier post about the option, so I corrected that for other readers, thanks.

I don't see anything wrong, but you're showing a RMCF with no changes. I meant show me one where it's going to do a change, and then I could see if there's an issue.  You'd probably spot that yourself, but if people answering questions assumed the person asking was doing everything right, not many questions would get answered, would they?

The obvious thing is that that you're using several fields in your rename. If any of them are empty, then you're going to have a problem. But you should see that in the preview.

Regarding your "one more thing" that forces us to draw one of two conclusions:
1. Something changed on the system in the meantime; a folder appeared or disappeared, or files did, that were either causing a conflict or caused a missing location or something like that.
2. You only think you did exactly the same thing twice but actually there was a difference.

But you could probably surmise those two yourself. RMCF has had bugs from time to time, but they are not intermittent.  The same action with the same input under the same conditions produces the same result.  Since you don't have video of what you were actually doing when this went wrong that one time, I can't say any more, sorry.

[madmelmon]

Gotcha. Thanks again for the help, at least i know I'm not doing anything completely silly (I think.)

Anyway, here's a screencap of a similar move (from my desktop to the final location, like I did when the problem happened.) This one went fine, like it does the vast majority of the time.

What's odd is that I was doing TWO albums at the same time this last time, but only one vanished.

Thanks again!