Movies deleted from library after moving to external drive (1 Viewer)

[yossis]

Hi,

I connected a new external hard disk to my HTPC and moved some of my movie collection to it.
I then opened Moving Pictures configuration and added the new drive to the sources list.
The result was that all the movies I moved to the new external disk got deleted from the library and are detected as new movies to import.

Is this a normal behavior?
In any case is there a way I can recover my library? I have a recent backup, but if I'll simple restore it, I guess it will happen again once I open the configuration, no?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

Yossi

 

[fforde]

I think this should work:

1. Restore your database backup.
2. Disconnect your old removable drive from the computer.
3. Start Moving Pictures, no movies should be removed from your database.
4. Add the new drive to your import paths.
5. Existing movies should be switched over.
6. Next time add the new import path before moving files.

EDIT:
To be clear, Moving Pictures will always try to migrate movies, but this is done when the plugin launches. So you opened the plugin, it saw all these movies were missing and it couldn't find them moved elsewhere so it removed them from the database. Then you added the new import path and it started readding them.

 

[yossis]

Thank you for the quick response!

The backup I have is of the database. I would prefer not to move the movies back to the primary hard disks. But if there is no other choice this is what I'll do. Is that true, I must move the files back?

Actually, its a shame that movies are automatically removed from the database without any user intervention. I can think of other, not so rare cases, that this might happen - rename of a folder, hard disk that doesn't for some reason mount after a reboot etc.

Maybe I should open an issue about that if it makes sense.

 

[fforde]

You do not need to move any files. You do need to disconnect your old removable disk though.

And all the situations you mentioned are handled correctly, a file or folder rename works perfectly, moving from one import path to another as well. If a disk is offline Moving Pictures is smart enough to realize that the movies are not gone, the device they are stored on is. So in this case, again, the movies will not be deleted from the database.

 

[yossis]

Hope I understood you correctly:
I have 3 internal hard drives which were (and are now also) included as sources. I added new external disk and moved files from the 3 internal disks to it. Then I opened the configuration and added the new disk.
From what you say, I need to restore from backup, rename ALL the included sources (4 folders from 3 different hard drives), launch the configuration again, add the external hard drive, rename the folders back to the previous name and launch the configuration again.
Am I correct?

Thank you for the effort.

 

[fforde]

I am sorry I must have misread you above. I was under the impression you had moved movies from one external drive to another. This complicates things... The problem is that Moving Pictures removes the movies from the database before you have a chance to tell it about the new import path. So you need to trick Moving Pictures into thinking that the disk where the files used to be stored is offline. if you could do this then Moving Pictures would not remove the movies from the database.

Honestly I am not sure there is a proper solution aside from moving the files back. I am sorry. In the future in situations like this, if you add the new import path before you move the files you will avoid this problem. At this point though I would recommend just letting things reimport.

:sorry:

 

[yossis]

NP, I'll try what I wrote (based on the offline behavior you described) and if it will not work I'll re-import.
Will post my results. Thank you again.

 

[fforde]

Good luck.

 

[yossis]

OK, I'm reporting back. It worked!
This is what I did:
1. Restored the database from a backup
2. Renamed all the movies folders
3. Started configuration and added the external drive (all the movies are marked as red but nothing is removed from the database)
4. Closed the configuration
5. Renamed the movies folders to the original name
6. Started the configuration again. All the movies I moved to the external drive are indicated by a red fond and the plugin detected that they were moved.
7. Closed the configuration

Thank for the help.

 

[fforde]

Great news! Very glad to hear it!