[MZAdotcom]

First time posting, so I'll make this as brief and straight to the point as possible:

I've been using Kodi for a couple of years now with my HTPC and love it.

The only and major problem I've always had is that every now and then, for random reasons it seems, all the artwork/posters for my video [movies/TV shows] collection disappear. I've had to rebuild it one by one a bunch of times. Having a collection of several hundred titles, you can imagine the PITA this can be.

To be clear, this last time everything disappeared, it was because the main 4TB external HDD with my media files on it was assigned a different letter by Windows. This happened, I believe, when I upgraded from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10 Pro. Don't know why Windows automatically did this, but it's left me, yet again, with no artwork/posters for my videos. All that customization, gone!

I did some research and found the folders where all of the artwork/posters are, so they haven't been deleted or anything, which would be ridiculous. So how do I fix the broken link to the corresponding files in Kodi? How do I point all the right artwork/poster files back to where they're suppose to be pointed to.

Please help. Thanks in advance.

[PatK]

Windows assigns drive letters like the game 'musical chairs' from the start of the alphabet. (ask MS why this is) Anyway most of us have seen this and manually assign a letter to our externals starting from the bottom of the alphabet using the disk management tool. If you're like me with numerous drives you will consider naming each drive by the assigned letter i.e. Drive F: becomes Foxtrot, Drive H: is Hotel etc. On the rare occasion windows loses it's brains, you can spot drives letters out of place (sometimes it's just plugging in a USB key that throws it off, other times it's a re-scan of the drive pool). I should note, plugging drives into your hardware in a different order will bring chaos.

Kodi never deletes, but the paths can be shuffled around, it never hurts to check your drive set-up, but even when the drive letter is not found, all your skin settings, source paths, user-data are still intact in the C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\Kodi All you need to do is find the drive source letter, and relabel it, just opening the information through the context menu with a movie in focus is enough to see what the missing letter is. I encourage most users to export their library in settings to separate files, this will write a copy of all your meta-data to the movie folder (which makes a local re-scan fast and easy if needed).

If you're using -p portable mode, then all of this is critical because internal paths are used for all your content and changes. In some circumstances, (data corruption) Kodi can become confused and set up as default and it looks to all intensive purposes you have lost it all. A careful look into C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\Kodi will ascertain if your user data has been overwritten. In these cases you are dealing with some software anomaly and restoring would be best handled with a back-up or fresh installation and local re-scan. Of course it goes without saying, a back-up is the best insurance.

[MZAdotcom]

Thank you for the assistance, PatK.

Here's my situation: I have 4 4TB external HDD's for media use; they're swapped out using 2 docking stations attached to my HTPC according to what I want to watch/the content = BRD vs. DVD. All 4 drive letters were manually set by me when they were blank for use with my 3 systems = 1 desktop, 1 laptop and 1 HTPC. All are running Windows 10, just different versions = 1 Home, 2 Pro.

So my question is, how does one check, *specifically in Windows*, besides simply going to the right folder/files, to see if Kodi is pointing at the right drive/files/folders? I don't see any way of doing this in Kodi itself under System > Settings, etc.. Is there a way, say, using the Windows Command function with elevated Administrator privileges, to do this? As mentioned in my original post, I've already found all of the artwork/posters. They're where they're suppose to be @ C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Thumbnails > multiple folders.

I have tried a bunch of workarounds without any luck. Right-clicking on the HDD's in question in Kodi, I've used "Edit source", "Remove source", "Change content", have tried "Scan for new content", rescanned all the drives many times. No change. I'm @ my wit's end with this. Don't want to have to manually go in 1 by 1 and fill everything in, yet again.

Also, how do you backup your settings? If it functions similar to reliable computer backup software/backup files, that's great. But, I still would like to restore everything to normal before doing this. Again, the point is to save me the headache of customizing everything from scratch.

Side note: I do have a NAS and have used it with Kodi. But, from my experience, having external HDD's has been easier to manage and stream media from. Also, I do have a gigabit home network.

[PatK]

Insert a bit of wit... oops couldn't find any, but this discussion is moving from an issue with your set-up disappearing into storage. At this point the hardware guys have it all over me. I'm pretty much in the same boat, most of the users have gone full NAS especially when it comes for multi systems accessing the same collection.

You should be pointing your finger at MS, although they have made efforts in that area with drive pooling etc. but nothing that satisfies me yet. It would be really nice if the 'Path/Share not found requester' would just insert a drive letter, it would be easy. Ran into this, which might have you interested http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=96183 I switch my set-ups too often for this kind of implementation. The obvious solution, is just keep everything online.

For back-ups, I just copy the entire contents of the Kodi roaming folder (lock, stock & barrel) to another drive, takes 5 minutes and it's everything. I also export my library for ease of editing the meta-data.

[MZAdotcom]

Thanks for the input again, PatK. Sorry it took me a while to get back, life's been hectic

"...most of the users have gone full NAS especially when it comes for multi systems accessing the same collection."

I was there. Still have a NAS, but in my experience, it was more complicated than simply hooking up an external HDD or 2 using a docking station. Even though I've always ran mostly Windows on all my machines, connecting to my home network has always given any flavor of Microsoft's OS a workout. Example, sometimes it wouldn't connect at all or would take a long time to connect or I'd be forced to reboot for things to be recognized. It got too much, so my current solution is pretty solid. Well, except when the OS decides to change the assigned letter to an external HDD and then here we are again.

"...this discussion is moving from an issue with your set-up disappearing into storage...You should be pointing your finger at MS, although they have made efforts in that area with drive pooling etc. but nothing that satisfies me yet. It would be really nice if the 'Path/Share not found requester' would just insert a drive letter, it would be easy."

What you're saying there at the end is kind of the whole point. The issue is NOT with Windows, but with Kodi. If the programmers/software designers behind this wonderful piece of code would simply create a designated, controllable folder/path, which you could easily repoint things to when something goes awry, it would save all of this hassle. But as is, it just isn't like that; I don't see an option to do this at System > Settings. I hope and would highly suggest that this change be included in a future version of Kodi.

"Ran into this, which might have you interested http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=96183 I switch my set-ups too often for this kind of implementation. The obvious solution, is just keep everything online."

Thank you for the link, some really useful info there. I'm currently looking over all of the comments. Also, when you say "keep everything online", are you meaning turned on/accessible at all times or in the cloud/storage? If it's the latter, it would be impossible for me since I have 24TB worth of entertainment data. Wow.....typing that out loud sounds crazy.

"For back-ups, I just copy the entire contents of the Kodi roaming folder (lock, stock & barrel) to another drive, takes 5 minutes and it's everything. I also export my library for ease of editing the meta-data."

Again, as there is no built-in option to do this in Kodi, this is another round about way of doing something vs. a, say, simple "Backup Settings" option. Love, LOVE this program, but this is another hole in it that needs to be filled in a future upgrade.

So yes, still have all my artwork/posters missing. I've left things as is, as customizing everything again would eat up too much of my time. Ugh.

[black_eagle]

This may help you with making back-ups easily.

[MZAdotcom]

Thank you, black_eagle. From just skimming it, it seems to be aimed more at Linux users of Kodi, but I'll look into this. Cheers.

[PatK]

when you say "keep everything online", are you meaning turned on/accessible at all times or in the cloud/storage? If it's the latter, it would be impossible for me since I have 24TB worth of entertainment data. Wow.....typing that out loud sounds crazy.

I'm on my 5th drive, using something called icy dock http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=163 and I can switch all or one drive off-line or online as needed.