Fix Broken Links
Media Center's Auto-Import system includes a Fix Broken Links option. This option can be used to have Media Center automatically remove files from your Library which are missing from disk. There are three modes for this setting:
- No
- Auto-Import will never remove any missing files from the Library.
- Yes
- Automatically removes any files from the Library that it finds missing on disk, and reconnects previously missing files with newly located files. Be very careful with this setting if any of your disks are removable or network. If the disk is disconnected, that counts as "missing" and the files will be removed.
- Yes (protect files on missing drives)
- The default. This is the same as Yes, except for that files are "protected" if MC determines that drive is entirely missing.
The Protect files on missing drives option is useful with external and network volumes (such as USB drives or NAS devices) that may sometimes be disconnected or offline. With this option enabled, when it finds missing files, Auto-Import will try to determine if the drive itself is entirely offline, or if the drive exists but the files are actually missing, and only remove them in the latter case. This is important if your drive might go offline occasionally because otherwise Media Center would happily remove all files on a drive when it becomes disconnected! Please note that the OS does not always provide a clean way to make this determination and this setting is not 100% foolproof. If you experience difficulty with files on external or network volumes being removed from and re-imported into Media Center, disable this setting entirely.
More
- Auto-Import
- Import
- Thanks to glynor for this clear explanation.
- Later change that changed "leave network files" to "protect network files".