Files possibly deleted by the auto-organise library feature

[jack94]

I find the "Move files to organised folder" feature very helpful and always use it once I've got things properly tagged. So I thought I'd try out the "auto-organise media files" checkbox so I wouldn't have to remember to do this manually, but I've been having a problem with it.

It notified me just now that various files were no longer there and asked me whether I wanted to remove them from the library. I'm 100% sure those files were there before enabling this feature, and they were appropriately tagged—as I said, I already used the "organised folder" feature for my whole library before this without any problems—but now they are indeed gone: not there where they should be, not in the recycle bin, and if they've been moved to some other location, I can't find them. This is some full albums and some random tracks—I can't really discern any logic to it since the files are gone now, but maybe it affected files of a certain format? Just a guess though.

Another possibly relevant factor: I was syncing the whole library (~35,000 files) to my phone using the wired sync feature when this happened. Because it's such a large sync, I was doing it overnight, and when I woke up this morning I found my computer had gone to sleep, aborting the sync. So I'm wondering if the interaction of the sync, the auto-organise, and the computer interrupting them by going to sleep could have caused this somehow?

I could be misidentifying what's causing the problem, but it seems to have happened once I turned this feature on, so it's my best guess for now. If anyone has any other ideas what would have caused these files to disappear, please let me know. I've turned the auto-organise feature off now, anyway.

My other question: is there a quick way to see all the files in my library that seem to be missing? They're marked with that exclamation point warning symbol in the interface, but I would like a way of showing them all in one place so I can see which ones need fixing/redownloading rather than attempt to trawl through my library and find them manually.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

[frankz]

My other question: is there a quick way to see all the files in my library that seem to be missing? They're marked with that exclamation point warning symbol in the interface, but I would like a way of showing them all in one place so I can see which ones need fixing/redownloading rather than attempt to trawl through my library and find them manually.

I don't know what you did, but the answer to this specific question is Tools->Tagging Tools->Other "Files to Edit" Filters->Show Dead Links

Hopefully someone can make heads or tails of the rest. Unless you're on a shared network drive or NAS, anything deleted should be in your recycle bin, but I don't know why anything would be deleted and MB would usually make you confirm that something should be unless you turned that off.

[Steven]

The file organiser/ auto-organiser doesnt delete music files, it just moves them.
If the main panel was showing an ! exclamation by the missing files then thats a good indicator the files were deleted or moved somewhere else outside of MB

[jack94]

I don't know what you did, but the answer to this specific question is Tools->Tagging Tools->Other "Files to Edit" Filters->Show Dead Links

Hopefully someone can make heads or tails of the rest. Unless you're on a shared network drive or NAS, anything deleted should be in your recycle bin, but I don't know why anything would be deleted and MB would usually make you confirm that something should be unless you turned that off.

Thanks, that's a useful tool! Checking there, it doesn't look like too many files were affected thankfully, just a few albums and some random tracks. No obvious pattern to it, none of them were tracks I'd done anything with recently, but at least I can fix them now and keep an eye out for if it happens again.

The file organiser/ auto-organiser doesnt delete music files, it just moves them.
If the main panel was showing an ! exclamation by the missing files then thats a good indicator the files were deleted or moved somewhere else outside of MB

Makes sense, I suppose if it had moved them it would still know where they are! I did try out some other syncing solutions recently (Media Monkey, Sync Thing), but I'd already given up on them and uninstalled them days before this happened, so assumed it wouldn't be their fault. But it's possible, I suppose. For now I'll just replace the files and see if it happens again at some point.

Thanks for your replies!

[jack94]

No, the problem seems to be continuing. Another album I'd just added back in has vanished, the whole folder containing it is gone and I get the following message from MusicBee:

The following files were not saved. Check the error log for details

1-01 Fists of Fury.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

1-02 Can You Hear Him.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

1-03 Hub-Tones.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

1-04 Connections.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

1-05 Tiffakonkae.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

1-06 The Invincible Youth.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

1-07 Testify.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

1-08 One of One.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

2-01 The Space Travelers Lullaby.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

2-02 Vi Lua Vi Sol.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

2-03 Street Fighter Mas.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

2-04 Song for the Fallen.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

2-05 Journey.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

2-06 The Psalmnist.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

2-07 Show Us the Way.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

2-08 Will You Sing.flac  --  D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
     The system cannot find the file specified.

Checking the error log, a bit before the above text (half an hour ago) I see this, not sure if it's related or not:

19/08/2022 18:07:05 - 10.0.22000.0 - 3.4.7805.33439D - System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at #=zziapYCHkKIL0B5EplaYmmhGl87_u.#=zU1HwK_k=.#=zwO7tTAtcQHpV(String #=zYwQUFZE=)
   at #=zziapYCHkKIL0B5EplaYmmhGl87_u.#=zATl85q0rA3pg.Dispose(Boolean #=zoKOBUQQ=)
   at System.ComponentModel.Component.Finalize()

At the same time, the album art for this album has been randomly applied to all the other albums by the same artist, and to a bunch of random albums by other artists. Very confused by what's happening here and what would be causing it (whether it's musicbee or not).

[frankz]

Based on your comment about the art, it sort of sounds like your auto-organize rules are sending everything to a single folder.  Don't know why MB wouldn't be able to find them unless the naming rules are such that newly auto-organized files are overwriting previously auto-organized files.  (i.e. Everything that gets auto-organized is getting sent to a central folder and renamed as the track number or something similar).

I wouldn't know about the error message.  Do you have write permission on the folder you're trying to auto-organize to?

Maybe posting a screenshot of your auto-organize rules would help? I don't use it (for this sort of reason) but maybe someone can figure it out.

[Steven]

are you happy to run a debug version? It would alert when MB is deleting a music file and log file moves/deletes

for the files in D:\MusicBee\Music\Kamasi Washington\Heaven and Earth\
- how did the auto-organise get invoked eg. did you edit the tags of all the album files in one go?
- if you did edit the tags, did you change any of the artist, album or title field values or was it updating some other field that didnt affect the auto-organised file path?
- is move non-media files also enabled in auto-organise preferences? as frankz suggested a screenshot of your organise rules will help