Recovering from hard drive crash playlist empty

[mystery666]

First, i tried searching, the search function said "The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: playlist." so I'm sorry if this is a repeat post.

I had a hard drive fail and my back up was a few months old. All my music was on the x: drive, my back up is the y: drive. I changed the media folders to y: but the existing playlists report back 0 songs. I tried exporting to change the paths but the exported file is blank.

Can you tell me where subsonic stores the playlists so I can grab the files and edit them manually? Thanks!

[gurutech]

Default playlist location for a Linux installation is /var/playlists. But it seems you have Windows, so I'm not sure where that playlist folder is located. You could try C:\Subsonic\Playlists, or search your C: drive for *.m3u or *.m3u8 files.

[mystery666]

I found a folder with m3u files in it but they're over a year old and i edit playlists daily. tried creating a new playlist in subsonic and searched the playlist name as well as *.m3u and *.m3u8, nothing new found so subsonic isn't using the name I give it or m3u or m3u8 extensions.

Nothing in the settings indicates where the playlists are stored. They must be somewhere.

[mr_nobody]

Pretty sure since 4.7, they are stored in the database, not in the filesystem...

[BKKKPewsey]

Pretty sure since 4.7, they are stored in the database, not in the filesystem...

Correct - too late now but you can export your SS playlists as m3u's for backup.
Then you can re-import them to recover.

[mystery666]

The windows boot drive that had Subsonic installed on it is fine, still running. just lost the data drive with the music. Where are the playlists in the c:\subsonic folder? When i click on export playlist in subsonic it gives me essentially a blank file.

Why would it erase my playlists? I can rerip my CDs but surely Subsonic isn't design to erase playlists without warning?

[gurutech]

If you had Subsonic running when your media drive crashed, the playlists wouldn't be able to access the files listed in the m3u file, so it pulls them out, which is why you are seeing "0" files in your playlists.

Unfortunately, if you don't have a backup, the only way to restore them is to recreate them from scratch. This has happened to me on several occasions, so now I back up (export) all of my playlists at least once a week, just to be safe. I can import them when I need to.

[mystery666]

Just to be clear, I love Subsonic, and i've been using it for years and paid for it. But i find it hard to believe that Subsonic was programmed to delete your playlists like that. What if someone keeps their music on an external hard drive and it gets switched off / unplugged accidentally. Next thing you know Subsonic just deletes your playlists?

Can you imagine if your DVR popped up one day and said "We noticed that your cable provider is experiencing an outage in your area so we deleted all your recording schedules, please reprogram"

I've got backups of my subsonic folder, can i get them from that somehow? What's the point of backing up Subsonic if it doesn't back up the playlist files? There has to be an answer to this.