Missing library folders after Roon update despite rescanning (ref#KA8KOO)

[P_Lakey]

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· Music won’t play or issues with my library

Music won’t play or issues with my library

· Local files won't import or appear

Tell us what's going on

· Hello. I have been using Roon for a long long time! I have a library shared to my core over ethernet to a RAID. I have the Library organized very well (ripped CDS) and can see all the folders on the RAID. There are many many that are just not showing up at all in Roon.... but they used to! I just did an update and wonder if that has somthing to do with it... but I have spcific examples of huge folders with CD Albums that are just totally missing in Roon and even when I go to the "folder" section of Roon and navigate manually.... Help! (P.S. Yes I have rescanned.)

Tell us about your home network

· Ethernet, RAID, Roon server, Roon endpoints, etc

[Robert_F (Rob)]

@P_Lakey , have you made sure 1) all your files are visible and 2) nothing is skipped in the library scan? You can check the former by navigating to Settings > General and toggle on Show hidden tracks and albums, and for the latter to determine if files are completely missing, check Skipped files under Settings > Library.

[P_Lakey]

@Robert_F I have, and this is the big thing: it’s worked fine for years and years. “Show hidden track” is yes, “Skipped Files” is nothing. And look, when i navigate to folders: no Pink Floyd at all… see my screen shot.

[Geoff_Coupe]

Judging from the above screenshot, Roon is also showing some folders that do not appear to be present on your RAID NAS. For example, Roon is showing folders The Pixies and PJCK04-Hi that are not present on your NAS…

Are you sure that you are looking at the same folder structures?

Can you post a screenshot of your Watched Folders ( > Storage)?

[P_Lakey]

Hi… yes, I assure you it’s watching the same folder… it’s been watching that folder for years… here are screen shots …

[benjamin]

Hey @P_Lakey,

Thanks for writing in and for sharing your report! To confirm, are there other artists other than Pink Floyd that you’re seeing as missing?

After reviewing a fresh Roon Server, it appears only Pink Floyd is affected. So this is isolated to that one artist’s folder, not a library-wide issue.

What the fresh logs show:

After a fresh Reboot, Roon repeatedly detects the same Pink Floyd tracks twice under two different casings of the same folder:

CD LIBRARY/ROCK-POP/Pink Floyd/... (mixed case)
CD LIBRARY/ROCK-POP/PINK FLOYD/... (all caps)

Every scan cycle, it imports the files fresh under one casing, then runs a “reshuffle and delete” against the stale database record still filed under the other casing. Across the ~4 days of logs this produced thousands of import/delete cycles for that one folder alone, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish You Were Here, etc. all got repeatedly deleted and re-added.

Why this causes “missing” content: if you browse the library at the exact moment mid-cycle, right after the delete but before the re-import completes, that album or folder will appear to have vanished. Given the churn is constant and ongoing (not a one-time cleanup), this explains exactly the symptom: Pink Floyd folders intermittently disappearing despite rescans, because the rescan itself is what’s re-triggering the delete half of the cycle.

Root cause: Roon’s database is treating the Pink Floyd folder path as case-sensitive, but the underlying RAID/NAS share is presenting it inconsistently, most likely the folder was renamed on the NAS (e.g., PINK FLOYD → Pink Floyd) without Roon’s database being informed, on a filesystem/share (SMB/NFS) that doesn’t enforce case consistency. Every scan re-discovers “two” folders that are really one.

Recommended next steps:

1. Check the actual folder name on the RAID directly (not through Roon), confirm there's only one physical Pink Floyd folder, not two folders differing only by case sitting side by side (some SMB/NAS setups can technically allow this).
2. If it's a single folder, force Roon to fully forget the stale path: remove the Storage location in Settings → Storage, then re-add it, so Roon rebuilds its path index from scratch instead of reconciling against the old casing forever.
3. Run a Backup → then a Clean up library, which purges orphaned duplicate entries like this stale all-caps record.

Let me know if this helps, thank you!

[P_Lakey]

Hi.

There are more artists missing. Not just Pink Floyd.

And again: this has just happened in the last day. My whole library was intact was synced perfectly before the last update.

[P_Lakey]

Hi again, thanks for your help on all this: there are TWO folders on the RAID, one all caps, one not… they have different folders inside them (most ar dupes)… should i combine all of these into one?

But, I also have folders showing up in Roon that have weird names; these are actually named differently on the RAID “Public Image Limited” for example…

[P_Lakey]

Update: I renamed one of the folders Pink Floyd 2, and now they both show up in my folder library now… but i still have these weird folder names:

[vadim]

Hey @P_Lakey,

Thanks for the update and the screenshots. That explains the second issue.

Those cryptic names (like PJCKO4~H) are Windows/NTFS auto-generated 8.3 short filenames: legacy compatibility aliases created alongside the real long folder name. Normally a short name is just the first 6 characters plus ~1 (for example, Pink Fl~1), but when a folder has many neighbors sharing the same first 6 characters, NTFS falls back to a hashed 8-character alias instead. That’s why it looks unrelated to the real name (“Public Image Limited,” in your case).

This looks like the same underlying pattern as the Pink Floyd casing issue: somewhere in the chain (your RAID’s share, or the SMB protocol layer), Roon is picking up the short-name alias for a folder instead of the real long name during a scan, rather than this being a separate, library-wide problem.

A few things we’d like you to check:

1. On the RAID or NAS itself, not through Roon, please confirm whether 8.3 short-name generation is enabled on that volume. On a Windows server: fsutil 8dot3name query <drive>. On a Samba-based NAS, look for a “mangled names” setting.
2. If it’s enabled, please disable it going forward (fsutil 8dot3name set 1 <drive>), and strip existing short names if possible (fsutil 8dot3name strip) so new ones stop being generated.
3. As with the Pink Floyd folders, please remove and re-add the affected Storage location in Roon settings so it rebuilds its path index against the correct long names instead of reconciling old aliases.

Since you’re now seeing this on more than one artist folder, we’d treat it as the same root cause (unstable name resolution over the share) rather than a separate bug. Worth checking those two NAS settings first before we dig further on our end.

Please let us know what you find.

[connor]

Hi @P_Lakey,

We’re circling back since we haven’t seen a response in a few days.

Have you tried removing and re-adding the location hosting the Pink Floyd tracks? We need to force Roon to add the file path as a fresh location so it overwrites the incorrect shorthand path it’s been using for this Watched Folder.

We’ll watch for your reply.

[P_Lakey]

Hi all.

So I just renamed one of those folders “Pink Floyd 2” and now I see both in Roon. So that seems fixed.

I have not had a chance to delve into the weird name file issue yet. I’ll keep you posted on that.

[P_Lakey]

Hi all… I have no idea how to look for “mangled names” setting on my NAS… I am using a Synology NAS DS418…

[vadim]

Hello @P_Lakey

Good progress on the Pink Floyd folders. For the other folders showing those cryptic short names (like PJCKO4~H), we checked Synology’s own documentation on this. Rather than a setting to toggle, they point to the actual folder or file name violating Windows naming rules, most commonly a trailing space or period at the end of the name, one of the reserved characters (: " / \ | ? *), or a reserved name like CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1-4, or LPT1-3.

Could you please check the actual folder name for “Public Image Limited” (and the other affected ones) directly on the NAS via File Station, specifically looking for a trailing space, a trailing period, or any of those characters? If you find one, renaming it to remove the offending character should stop Roon from picking up the short-name alias.

If that doesn’t turn anything up, this would be a good one to raise with Synology support directly, since a NAS-wide setting to disable short-name generation entirely would mean editing Samba configuration outside of DSM’s normal interface, which isn’t something we’re able to walk you through safely, but Synology’s team can advise on that for your specific model and DSM version.