Losing library

[Ford Fairlane 11]

I have a TV folder setup on a WD my cloud ext2.

I'm running emby from a qnap server, but for space I've put TV in the WD. 

Recently the TV folder has been showing up as empty with nothing in it. 

I check the WD from laptop and it's still connected, all files are playable and all seems fine 

But on the emby server there's zero files or folders. 

The only way to get it running again is to do a full rescan which takes a few hours. 

Have to redo all the playlists from scratch as even after recan, all the playlists are empty still 

It's now happened twice within 24 hrs and I've not got the foggiest idea why it's happening. 

 

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Probably need to see the server log for when it happened but sounds like the storage becomes unavailable and Emby scheduled scan happens and remove the media.

 

[Ford Fairlane 11]

Hi

I'll see if I can locate the server log, 

I'll also check to stop the scan see if that solves it. 

 

Thanks for the advice

 

 

[Ford Fairlane 11]

theres the log file,ive also disabeled scheduled scans to see if this helps.

 

thanks for the help

embyserver-63855907200(2).txt

[Luke 42077]

HI, are you able to update to Emby Server 4.8.8 and see if that helps?

[Ford Fairlane 11]

So I disabled the auto scan of TV drive, not had any of the previous issues with scan  not detecting folders.

 

Thanks for advice H2P

[Luke 42077]

On 8/21/2024 at 5:18 PM, Ford Fairlane said:

So I disabled the auto scan of TV drive, not had any of the previous issues with scan  not detecting folders.

 

Thanks for advice H2P

Did you ever update Emby server?

[Ford Fairlane 11]

14 hours ago, Luke said:

Did you ever update Emby server?

I did update, but a week or 10 days after I disabled the auto scan feature 

 

[Luke 42077]

On 8/23/2024 at 9:17 AM, Ford Fairlane said:

I did update, but a week or 10 days after I disabled the auto scan feature 

 

@Ford FairlaneHi, so are you running library scans manually?

[Ford Fairlane 11]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

@Ford FairlaneHi, so are you running library scans manually?

Yes, just when I add new stuff I run a scan.

Not had an issue since I stopped auto

[Ford Fairlane 11]

On 24/08/2024 at 19:11, Luke said:

@Ford FairlaneHi, so are you running library scans manually?

@Lukehey

 

since ive gotten the emby update sorted, this issue has reappeared.

i have the libary set to manual scan, but whenever the libary is repopulated and all intros and subs are filled, the libary will then later that day show as the folder being empty.

 

but when i do a libary scan to repopulate the folder, i then go in to the folder and the folder icons appear without any media inside.

if i click on identify, the go back and refresh, after a few seconds the folder has repopulated has all the season folders and episodes and watched checks are back in place.

 

the emby logs are massive so wouldnt know which part is relevant, size varies between 4 and 7 mb

[sa2000 673]

21 hours ago, Ford Fairlane said:

the emby logs are massive so wouldnt know which part is relevant, size varies between 4 and 7 mb

would like to see the complete set of logs covering period from launch of emby server. If that was long ago and as the logs get purged after 3 days, you could see if you can reoeat the behavior after a fresh relaunch. Would be happy with a zip of the downloaded sanitized log files - if too big

 

[Ford Fairlane 11]

On 02/12/2025 at 10:58, sa2000 said:

would like to see the complete set of logs covering period from launch of emby server. If that was long ago and as the logs get purged after 3 days, you could see if you can reoeat the behavior after a fresh relaunch. Would be happy with a zip of the downloaded sanitized log files - if too big

 

hi

 

the scan just reset back to the folder being empty, it seems once everything has been added like subs and art etc etc it fails.

ive enclosed the last 4 log additions but are small to quite large.

 

i loaded the backup i created and thats repopulated, but the subs and intro skip points have to be re added.

 

 

thanks

 

 

logs.rar

[Luke 42077]

Hi, have you updated to Emby Server 4.9.3? Has that helped?

[fordfairlane 2]

12 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, have you updated to Emby Server 4.9.3? Has that helped?

Hi

 

Just installed, will keep eye on it.

But on last update was still regularly happening, so fingers crossed 

[Ford Fairlane 11]

installed update, entire library disappeared again.

scan of drive is taking forever, even after cancelling scan and trying to import a older backup it just stays the same and restarts the scan.

[Luke 42077]

5 hours ago, Ford Fairlane said:

installed update, entire library disappeared again.

scan of drive is taking forever, even after cancelling scan and trying to import a older backup it just stays the same and restarts the scan.

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[Ford Fairlane 11]

On 13/01/2026 at 17:26, Luke said:

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

hi

 

its been about a week since the libary repopulated and during the night its showing empty again.

 

ive kept real time monitiring off, but it still does a backup every night, and i cant stop this from happening which seems to be overwriting my backup that was created with the folder fully populated.

 

i have no idea when its happening tp take a portion of the log to show.

 

its becoming a very serious problem that i just cant be bothered dealing with it, the tie and inconvenience is frustrating

 

ive included the latest log file

embyserver-63904463987.txt

Edited January 20 by Ford Fairlane
adding log file

[sa2000 673]

5 minutes ago, Ford Fairlane said:

have no idea when its happening tp take a portion of the log to show

Would like to see all the logs leading to the point of time when the items get removed.

If you are not happy to upload logs on the forum, you can copy out the contents of the logs directory, zip the copy and send me by Private Message

[sa2000 673]

7 minutes ago, Ford Fairlane said:

and i cant stop this from happening which seems to be overwriting my backup that was created with the folder fully populated.

There is an option of the backups configuration to keep more than one copy of the database files

[Ford Fairlane 11]

2 minutes ago, sa2000 said:

Would like to see all the logs leading to the point of time when the items get removed.

If you are not happy to upload logs on the forum, you can copy out the contents of the logs directory, zip the copy and send me by Private Message

the only other logs are the ffmpeg-transcode-e9ebcb89- logs 

the one ive uploaded is the one that generates every day.

 

thinking about it, itll maybe be the logs from tonight that might show something if it happened after midnight.

[Ford Fairlane 11]

5 minutes ago, sa2000 said:

There is an option of the backups configuration to keep more than one copy of the database files

yeah ive done that and dragged a copy to a separate folder to be double sure that it wont get over written.

 

is there a way to stop the automatic backup?

 

[sa2000 673]

2 minutes ago, Ford Fairlane said:

is there a way to stop the automatic backup?

So long as you have a good backup to go back to, you can delete the scheduled task trigger

 

[Ford Fairlane 11]

ive went in and cancelled a couple of daily and weekly scans to see if this makes a difference.

[sa2000 673]

19 minutes ago, Ford Fairlane said:

he only other logs are the ffmpeg-transcode-e9ebcb89- logs 

the one ive uploaded is the one that generates every day.

 

thinking about it, itll maybe be the logs from tonight that might show something if it happened after midnight.

Logs are retained for 3 days. This can be extended by editing system.xml

The log you attached covers the 19th of January (period covered 2026-01-18 23:59 to 2026-01-19 23:59)

The log does not show removals from the library as was seen before - eg beforehand we had log entries like these:

2025-12-11 08:11:45.281 Info App: Removing item from database, Type: Series, Name: The Simpsons, Path: smb://192.168.0.112/Tv/The Simpsons, Id: 243439
2025-12-11 08:11:46.828 Info App: Removing item from database, Type: Series, Name: American Dad!, Path: smb://192.168.0.112/Tv/American Dad, Id: 243440

No removals in the log for the 19th January.

Two issues show in the log

1. Running out of disk space of the QNAP - that could affect the operation of Emby Server.

This shows you were down to about 53Mb free space on the QNAP filesystem

2026-01-19 20:59:46.494 Info EncodingManager: Deleting segment /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/EmbyServer/programdata/transcoding-temp/CD5A04/CD5A04_0.ts due to disk space. Available space: 56004608

You can see that log line shows 

Available space: 56004608

2. Failures during probing the media files for S11 of Robot Chicken - there were being checked on the smb path - so the path was available. But the same ffprobe errors were logged later on probing the backup files on /Multimedia/TV Backup/ path on the QNAP - so suspect the files were invalid

But the log shows the smb path to 192.168.0.112/Tv accessible throughout the 19th January

When did the libraries disappear ?