Cleanup the Metadata of items no longer in the library?

[LqHnyBear 23]

I've noticed my Metadata/Library folder is getting to a rather large size. Is there a way to have Emby purge/cleanup the cache of items no longer in the library? Right now the only way I can see to do it is to manually go through each individual folder looking at the pictures in them to see if it's something I still have and that would take an eternity.

[Luke 42081]

Hi, this already happens automatically. When an item is removed from the database, so too is it's folder under the server's metadata folder. If something has gotten left behind, the most common reasons would be:

• Some type of error when trying to delete them (e.g being denied permission)
• Defect in an older server version 

Unfortunately the server does not contain any functions to help you analyze the contents and try to identify folders that are not being used.

[LqHnyBear 23]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, this already happens automatically. When an item is removed from the database, so too is it's folder under the server's metadata folder. If something has gotten left behind, the most common reasons would be:

• Some type of error when trying to delete them (e.g being denied permission)
• Defect in an older server version 

Unfortunately the server does not contain any functions to help you analyze the contents and try to identify folders that are not being used.

Is it safe to just delete everything in the library folder and let it rebuild? Would I need to rebuild or will it do it automatically?

[Luke 42081]

If you change the contents of the folder make sure to run the scan metadata folder scheduled task so that the server will become aware of it. For the most part, nothing will rebuild automatically. You'll just have lots of things with no images, and you'll need to do manual refreshes of metadata to get new images.

If you have reason to believe that there could be a lot of unused folders in there, then perhaps consider deleting that as well as your library database at the same time. Then you get the automatic downloading due to everything being scanned in again and a faster database at the same time.