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Doorpro

Hi All,

I have just changed out my almost full external drive for a larger one with plenty of space for thousands of more movies. I copied the original external drive onto the new one and now all of my movies won't play. They are all there but when I click on a movie to play it the "Remove movie from library" notice pops up and this happens for every movie that I have (3100+). The notice also says "The file is no longer available. Would you like to remove it from the library. See below.
The library is there just not playable and when I go in and tell kodi to update library it wont even scrape them again and there must be a way to make all my movies available again.
I should add that I run kodi from an Nvidia Shield and have not had a problem until I changed the hard Drive out.
If anyone can tell me what I have done wrong and how to fix this annoying issue I would be eternally grateful.

Regards,
Doug.

**Karellen** · 2022-09-08, 01:33

@Doorpro

Most likely the new hard drive has a different drive letter, and probably a different drive name.

Match those to the original drive and you should get it to work.

Doorpro · 2022-09-08, 01:58

Karellen,

I did that a while ago and even though kodi sees the movies it still wants me to delete them because theyre not available.

NeoCortex · 2022-09-08, 02:21

If you bring up the info screen for one of the movies, you should be able to see the path it's looking for that specific file. Then open up a file explorer outside Kodi and make sure the drive letter and folder structure is identical. It should be a simple matter of just reassigning the drive letter in windows, assuming the actual folder structure on the disc is the same.

Worst case, clean library and rescan stuff in, but you really shouldn't have to resort to that.

**Karellen** · 2022-09-08, 03:26

@Doorpro

Exactly what NeoCortex said. This where you find the path in Kodi...

Doorpro · (This post was last modified: 2022-09-08, 04:59 by Doorpro.)

Karellen,

thank both you and Neocortex for your insightful help and the two pictures below will show you what I found however looking past this and doing as suggested is simply beyond me so could you please tell me how to change the path so that the movies are seen by Kodi because I am sure that you are both correct but I still have no idea how to fix this. I should add that this is not a netwrok issue as the drive is connected directly to my nvidea Sheild which had Kodi Installed.
Sorry to be a pain.

Regards,
Doug.

**Karellen** · 2022-09-08, 05:05

(2022-09-08, 04:55)Doorpro Wrote:

I am guessing the problem is the\14927484927465C5C\ part of the path.
What platform are you using- Windows?
Can you plug in your other hard drive and check the same screen. You need to find what the previous path was.

Before moving to the new drive, did you Export to Separate Files to give you nfo files? Do you have local artwork?
As for how to change the path, that might be difficult in Kodi unless you have SQL knowledge. Most likely you will need to delete your library and scrape again, and in future run a regular export to save your data.

Doorpro · (This post was last modified: 2022-09-08, 05:19 by Doorpro.)

The above picture is the original drive and It looks exactly the same on the old drive that is still working perfectly. Also, I'm using Win11

**Karellen** · 2022-09-08, 05:41

(2022-09-08, 05:18)Doorpro Wrote: The above picture is the original drive and It looks exactly the same on the old drive that is still working perfectly. Also, I'm using Win11

Hmm, I don't know.
This is a USB external drive right? I am curious about your path as it looks more network than local drive. How did you add the disk?

Doorpro · (This post was last modified: 2022-09-08, 06:01 by Doorpro.)

Yes, It is a USB external drive attached to an Nvidea Sheild. I simply copied the content of the old drive over to the new drive as I have done hundreds of times but I have never tried to replace a drive within Kodi before hence this issue. It Is not a network drive and is in fact a local drive. I have removed it hundreds of times from the system and added movies and when I plug it back in Kodi imediately starts to scrape for new files. The old drive still does that but this new drive does nothing and I can even force it to update the movies.

**Klojum** · 2022-09-08, 07:02

(2022-09-08, 05:57)Doorpro Wrote: attached to an Nvidea Sheild
...
Also, I'm using Win11

It's called an Nvidia Shield, and it has a Android (Linux) based OS. It usually gives connected drives a 'name' when there is no HDD label available to keep drives apart.

Also, Android and Windows treat their system paths very differently. It's also possible that "14927484927465C5C" is the HDD label. I'm just wondering if you try to use the same external HDD on both Windows and the Nvidia Shield.

Doorpro · 2022-09-08, 11:13

Yes, I have used the HDD on both Windows and the Sheild. It shows no difference and like I have said I have used HDD's this way without issue for a couple of years now. I cant help but think that the Issue is with the Sheild and at this point I am wondering how I could wipe the drives memory from it and simply re-scrape everything but I dont know how to do that.

**Karellen** · 2022-09-08, 11:37

@Doorpro

If you want to clear your library and start again, a couple of ways to do that.
Either start fresh by deleting the Kodi data folder (wiki)
or
If you only want to wipe the libraries only, then go to each of your Sources, call up the Context Menu, select Change Content, and set This directory contains to None.
Answer yes when asked if you want to remove the library items, and let it run the Clean Library.
Now go back and change them back to Movies/TV shows and rescrape your library,

Now if you want to heed my advice, because I don't think you have a great setup from what I saw in your images
Move your movies into Movie folders
Install Artwork Dump and allow it to download the original artwork as you scrape your new library... https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=360078
Once you have your library set up as you want it, run regular Export to Separate Files to preserve your data.
With this setup, you can rebuild Kodi's library quite easily on any device.

Doorpro · 2022-09-08, 14:44

Thank you so much for that advice. I see the huge mistake that I have made whereas I thought that I could just copy the movie files over from one drive to the next I should have plugged the new drive into the Sheild first and had it recognized and formatted and then added the movie files. As far as not having a good set up I have it the best way for me because I only have movies on the drive (no tv, pic's music etc.) and it is the simplest way to add additional files and not worry about where the placement is and even though I'm sure that you are correct I think that I will continue doing it that way rather than adding a "movie file" first because I am not seing the necessity. I'm sure that I'm missing someting here but this will be the last time that I change the drive, hopefully. Thank you again for all your assistance and If I am missing something obvious please tell me because if something needs to be done that makes sense I will deffinately do it.

NeoCortex · 2022-09-08, 15:32

The directory you see there is where it's looking for the movie, regardless of what drive you have plugged in. I'm guessing that the drive name is different on the new drive. I would suggest trying to plug the new drive into windows and renaming it identically to that string of numbers that the old drive used that's in that picture.

I'm not great on Linux stuff, so I don't know if there's an easy way to rename a drive there, particularly on a Shield. It should be easy once you plug it into a Windows machine. Once you do that, and change the drive name, the shield should mount it in the right directory.