MediaMonkey deleted every MP3 file from my DropBox

[mxgolfcpu]

Yesterday I downloaded and installed MediaMonkey for the first time. Since my entire music database is in my DropBox, I added access to my DropBox under Devices & Services then initiated a Sync. I had thousands of MP3 files in my database which was taking a long time so I left it to do it's thing.

Today I come back and if I select Music-->All Tracks in MediaMonkey it shows a long list of my songs, but if I try to play anything it seemed to just skip and move on to the next file, as if it wasn't finding the file. So I went into my DropBox to verify that the songs I was trying to play were there. To my surprise, the only thing left in the folders was the album artwork. I did a search within the entire DropBox on "MP3" to see if the files were moved somewhere else within my DropBox. What I found was that every single MP3 in my DropBox was gone.

So I went into the Deleted files area in DropBox to find that every MP3 from my music library had been deleted at the time it was doing the sync yesterday. I had not enabled Auto Organize and have tried to verify that there isn't anything else configured in MediaMonkey to delete my music files.

Why would all of my MP3's be deleted by MediaMonkey?

[Ludek]

Hi,
this sounds like a pretty severe issue that we are not aware of, there must have been a coincidence resulting in this issue
If this is really the case we are very sorry for the lost, do you have a backup of the files?

Should I understand that in your library you already had all the files from your DropBox location (local Dropbox folder) and then you went to Devices & Services > DropBox and on the 'Library content' tab you configured all 'Music' to sync without checking the checkbox [..] Delete other files and playlists... and pressed [Sync now] which wiped the files?

The idea I have (I will need to re-test myself to confirm) is that MediaMonkey wanted to sync/copy the library files to DropBox, but because the library files were actually the DropBox files then it somehow copied each file to itself which was problably the reason for the deletion

I'll test this and try to replicate and fix ASAP ( tracking as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=20734 )

Thank you very much for reporting this and we are sorry for the troubles again :-/

[Barry4679]

If this is really the case we are very sorry for the lost, do you have a backup of the files?

Dropbox has a 30 day trash bin.
It may not cover files deleted programmatically, but it is worth checking.

You get access to it by signing into your account at Dropbox.com

[mxgolfcpu]

Thanks Barry, Yes, that is how I recovered my MP3 files in my DropBox. It took several hours to scroll and select every file, but eventually I got them all back.

Thanks for getting back to me Ludek. I did not have my music library in a local DropBox folder. My library is so big it is only fully present in DropBox online. I added access directly to my DropBox online under Devices & Services and authorized MediaMonkey to access my DropBox. Then from the three button menu above my DropBox under Devices & Services I selected Sync.

[Rob_S]

OP seems to have found his files back in drop box, thank goodness

So I went into the Deleted files area in DropBox to find that every MP3 from my music l

Seems an easy error to make, expecting sync to load file data into mediamonkey, while MM thinks it should sync the remote source to the local drive, which in this case was empty!!

I wonder if we should have a warning dialog which cannot be unchecked in case sync is about to delete files on the destination drive, which would warn the user " This Sync will DELETE xxx tracks from the destination, do you want to proceed?"

[Ludek]

I found some ways to replicate, but it is always tricky,
at first user needs to scan the files from DropBox local folder ( C:\Users\User\DropBox\Music\.. ) to the library and then connect to DropBox and sync and then either:

1) reproducible with 5.0.4.. but only if files were originally uploaded by 5.1+ instance, because in that case the target mask in 5.0.4 is generated without file extension (because of another bug)
and the file is going to be moved in the DropBox destination (resulting in the source file deletion before coping ot the new destination)
2) Change paths in Sync profile > File locations for already uploaded files and also check checkbox
[x] Enforce use of sync mas for files already on DropBox
3) Configure auto-conversion so that file extension is changed

In all cases the file already on DropBox is going to be moved in the destination, but because it is also source then the source is equal to the old destination and is deleted before it is actualy copied to the new destination..

[Rob_S]

I was envisioning a scenario where user attempts to sync prior to scanning ( by mistake instead of scanning) and effectively syncs an empty local playlist (or empty local drive) to a full dropbox....

User wouyld have to have turned on delete other files and playlists, and turned off the confirmation dialog...