Rebooted my Windows 11 Laptop and the USB drive letter changed disabling Emby access

[3dbinCanada 3]

Background:

My Emby library is a  ruggedized 2TB USB drive which holds photos, some movies, and mostly music (E:/Music , E:/Movies, and E:/pics ) When I get enough music collected on the C  drive of my laptop, I copy the contents over to the Emby USB drive followed up my scan library. I go onto Emby and look through the newly added content to ensure I got all MP3 tagging information correct and that it displays as it should. I also do a robocopy to 4 other USB drives distributed over the house that are connected to  ROKUs. This provides me physical backups as well as another method of accessing my using music should I lose internet via the MP3 player app on the ROKU. 

Yesterday, I did exactly that but decided to reboot the laptop before doing the robocopy backups. However, my robocopy failed and the logs indicated that E: drive wasn't available which it was prior to the reboot. Its been relabeled as F:  I added the music library first as F:/Music . Once the Emby scan was done, Emby could NOT  access the contents. I removed all libraries associated with the E: drive which solved the access problem to the F: /Music libraries. 

I'm not asking why the drive letter changed as this is not the forum for it. What I am asking is....is there a better way of Emby regaining access to the libraries or is what I did the only way to correct this issue?  Many thanks. 

[GrimReaper 3975]

1 minute ago, 3dbinCanada said:

or is what I did the only way to correct this issue?

Why haven't you just changed the drive letter back to E:\? 

[lorac 106]

Personally i would have gone into disk management and changed it back to E:

 

[3dbinCanada 3]

I was not aware of that feature. I'm more familiar with unix, some linux, and not at all a windows person. Looking into that feature for next time.  Many thanks  You can tell my unix background from the "/" instaed of the pc "\"  .

Edited April 15 by 3dbinCanada

[3dbinCanada 3]

How to Open Disk Management From Command Prompt   I found this. opened it up. If I had only known. Many thanks. 

[softworkz 4492]

Note: I've moved this to the Emby Server forum.

 

7 hours ago, 3dbinCanada said:

I'm not asking why the drive letter changed as this is not the forum for it. What I am asking is....is there a better way of Emby regaining access to the libraries or is what I did the only way to correct this issue?  Many thanks. 

For the unanswered part of your question, the answer is unfortunately "no".

When the location of the files changes and you change (or add) the library location in Emby Server, you will have them in Emby Server again, but they are not the same Emby items like before. So any associated data (watched, like, resume position, audio and subtitle selection) wil be lost.

[Gilgamesh_48 1097]

I believe it is possible to lock a Windows drive to a drive letter. I know I have over 13 USB drives on my server and their drive letters never change. I do not know exactly what I did way back when I originally set up my system but I do know I never see a drive letter change and I reboot my server at least weekly. When mapping a networked drive to a drive letter there is a setting to do that and I believe that local drives have a similar setting available.

[lorac 106]

1 hour ago, softworkz said:

Note: I've moved this to the Emby Server forum.

 

For the unanswered part of your question, the answer is unfortunately "no".

When the location of the files changes and you change (or add) the library location in Emby Server, you will have them in Emby Server again, but they are not the same Emby items like before. So any associated data (watched, like, resume position, audio and subtitle selection) wil be lost.

This is not true. I've moved media around to different locations, occasionally even recreated a library and the status sticks.

[Luke 39648]

Hi, the best option is to change the drive letter back,. If you can't do that, then yes, you'd have to remove the old path in Emby and add the new one.

[3dbinCanada 3]

11 hours ago, lorac said:

This is not true. I've moved media around to different locations, occasionally even recreated a library and the status sticks.

To say this is not true is inaccurate. To say that "that has not been my experience" would be better. I say this because softworkz description has mirrored by experience to a T. When I started emby and looked at the home screen, it clearly changed. Past played events that were logged are now gone.

Edited Wednesday at 01:38 PM by 3dbinCanada

[Luke 39648]

1 minute ago, 3dbinCanada said:

To say this is not true is inaccurate. To say that "that has not been my experience" would be better. I say this because softworkz description has mirrored by experience to a T. When I started emby and looked at the home screen, it clearly changed. Past played events that were logged are now gone.

In most cases, movies and tv shows will retain watch data via their external ids, assuming the ids before and after are the same. But this isn't a guarantee. That's why it's better (and quicker) to just update the drive letter to what it was before.

[3dbinCanada 3]

1 minute ago, Luke said:

In most cases, movies and tv shows will retain watch data via their external ids, assuming the ids before and after are the same. But this isn't a guarantee. That's why it's better (and quicker) to just update the drive letter to what it was before.

I'm definitely doing that next time. Much easier, faster, and things remain the same.  

[3dbinCanada 3]

Thanks to all that contributed a response. From my post, you can see where I found out how to remap the drives.