Media deletion problem

[bjduker]

I have had 200 media files deleted by Jellyfin so badly even Disk Drill could not put them back together, just by changing the settings on a collection.

I rebuilt, and separated everything into multiple Libraries, and just by selecting refresh metadata on one library, Jellyfin has deleted all MP4 files existing in the Library.

Jellyfin has destroyed more than 20 hours of digitizing my DVD library.

right now, this is looking to be the most worthless program ever.

My setup:  Windows 11, i9 CPU 64 GB RAM, RX 5700 Video Card, 2 external 6 TB HDD USB3.0 each library is in a unique folder.

Jellyfin 10.11.7.0

This caused a major meltdown by my wife after she spent over a week putting this together.

I'm almost to the point of abandoning this and moving on from this app forever...

[Rastin]

I never had that kind of problem with jellyfin. Have had different problems but non ever deleted my library. Were you doing anything else when this happened? Scanning for for meta data should not cause your files to be deleted. Post your logs when this happened. maybe someone here will be able to tell you what went went wrong. Also get a second drive so you can have back-ups as a drive can die, get damaged or corrupted.

[ArneR]

Easiest option to make sure this doesn't happen is either have your media read only (easily done in Linux/docker, not sure how under Windows), or if that is not feasible go into user settings and make sure all libraries are unselected under "Allow media deletion from". Do this for all users. I even have it set on my Admin user.

[theguymadmax]

If you still have the logs, please post them. How did you set up your system folders, e.g., cache, transcodes, and media folders?

[bjduker]

I never had that kind of problem with jellyfin. Have had different problems but non ever deleted my library. Were you doing anything else when this happened? Scanning for for meta data should not cause your files to be deleted. Post your logs when this happened. maybe someone here will be able to tell you what went went wrong. Also get a second drive so you can have back-ups as a drive can die, get damaged or corrupted.

I was adjusting a collection.  It was showing duplicate collections for the same movies. I emptied one collection by selecting remove from collection from each movie. once the duplicate collection was emptied, and all movies consistently showed up in the correct collection, i removed the empty collection, and all movies from the entire movies folder got deleted and were completely unrecoverable.

I have since uninstalled Jellyfin, reinstalled as a service and gave that service read-only access, which created its own issues, but I've worked through them and now things are stable once again now that Jellyfin has no ability to delete anything.  extremely aggravating...  I read that collections has a failing in this area after this happened; and a colleague I know that also uses Jellyfin told me "Oh yeah, don't use collections, it'll delete your media."  too little too late.

I now have 2, 6 TB drives and iDrive is going to run a full backup on the existing 4000 plus mp4 files. I also separated my shows and movies by genre into different Libraries, since it was an entire library that was deleted by that collection interaction.  ...And I turned off collections entirely and won't use them; not worth it.

Oh yeah, I was able to do that with delete media option turned off on the main jellyfin user account before I switched to service install option.

In Windows, you just create an account for the service, add it to the drive security for both of my media disks, gave it read & execute permissions, then I run Jellyfin as admin from now on. even when I tested trying to delete thing it didn't work, so I think that's fixed for good.  one thing though: if you have your images saved with your media in the blocked drive, you'll have to manually delete any of them that become problems, Jellyfin will save them in the data folder from then on.