Emby Server mysteriously disappeared along with all my libraries

[Bellatrix 0]

The last few years I've been using emby server installed on a Samsung m2 SSD (win10 boot drive) which also contains the AppData/Roaming/Embyxxx folders. However, all my media content is contain on a large separate WD hard drive which only contains media. Last week I had disconnected the WD drive from the system for a few hours, but then it was reconnected. A few days later I went to connect to the emby server and I got a connection error. To my surprise, I then noticed there were no traces of emby ANYWHRE on the SSD boot drive, including the folders in AppData/Roaming. I then checked the application logs in the win10 event viewer. Apparently, the Emby.Server.Updater.exe ran in the background the few hours that I had the WD drive removed from the system. This resulted with the removal of all traces of emby on my boot drive. I then had to download and reinstall emby again on my WIN10 SSD boot drive and create all my libraries again from scratch, then re-scanned the libraries on the WD which took a few hours. Everything is working fine again now, I just wanted to bring this to your attention. I attached the events from the event viewer.

 

Events.txt

[Abobader 3471]

Hello Bellatrix,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[Luke 42087]

Hi, is AppData/Roaming on the SSD? I assume so, right? If yes then it shouldn't matter that your WD was disconnected.

Outside of a hardware failure, the most common cause of this is some kind of security software or anti-virus software incorrectly flagging Emby Server and quarantining the folder. Can you please look into this?

[Bellatrix 0]

Nothing quarantined.  This computer has never had anti-virus software installed on it, but I did check the built-in Windows Defender, no virus history.

Yes, everything resides on a high quality Samsung 950 PRO m2 SSD installed on the motherboard, except for the actual media content, which is an external SATA drive (WD drive).

The timestamps in the windows application logs for when “Emby.Server.Updater.exe” ran corresponds to when everything disappeared.. All other folders in AppData/Roaming not pertaining to emby still exist. I also checked the logs for any other errors, but there were none, just from emby.

I also did a file system check on the SSD, but file system has no errors. I also performed full diagnostics scan on the SSD using Samsung Magician Tool,  but everything is fine. The only clue I have is when "Emby.Server.Updater.exe" ran without the WD Media drive attached.

I have been using emby for years now without any issues at all, so I'm not concerned about it happening again. In the future  I will make sure the external SATA drive is always connected just in case that caused the problem.

BTW, It is a beautiful program, and it absolutely works great!

 

 

[Carlo 4561]

Was your SSD drive the boot disk or a secondary drive?

[Bellatrix 0]

It's a boot disk for x64 WIN 10.

[Luke 42087]

Thanks for the feedback. What makes this stand out as not being an update related problem is the fact that both the executable and program data folders are gone. If it were just the executable folder then it's possible the updater could have failed part way through.

But we don't even have any code to delete the program data folder other than the uninstaller, so from the emby side of things I can't see how this would have happened.