Corrupted music files

[ghines]

I have a bizarre problem. I have a Western Digital MyCloud NAS drive with about 12000 music files on it. I access it using a Cambridge Audio media player (using the NAS drive's built-in DLNA server) and a Windows PC (using a drive mapping). I have been using Media Monkey successfully for some years for managing the library and syncing iDevices.

When playing an album recently, I noticed that one track was missing. The .M4A file was on the NAS drive in the right place but all of its ID3 tag information was gone and so I guess the DLNA server didn't "see" it associated with the album I was listenting to. Further investigation found that hundreds of files in (seemingly) random directories were similarly corrupted. Also, some files were completely missing and even some whole directories were missing. I suspect that their ID3 tags had become corrupted and then something (maybe Media Monkey) had moved them into an "unknown" artist directory (I do have the automatic directory maintenance feature turned on) because there were hundreds of files in there whereas normally there's only a handful (things like ringtones etc.).

Luckily, I am paranoid about backups and had a reasonably recent backup to restore them from, though not sufficiently recent that it didn't take quite a few tedious hours to figure out what was missing and corrupted and put everything right. Suspiciously, the date/time stamp on the corrupted files was around the time I last used Media Monkey to sync my iPhone and iPad. The other thing I did after starting Media Monkey was refresh the library using the "add/rescan folders" option.

So, I restored the library to what it should be, made a fresh backup, refreshed the library and set about resyncing my iPhone and iPad. Lo and behold, more files have become corrupted with date/time stamps at exactly the time I was syncing. Unfortunately, I can't set a read-only attribute on the NAS drive files and I'm now reluctant to let Media Monkey near the NAS drive for fear of it corrupting the files again. A return to iTunes for managing the library is not appealing.

Any ideas? I'm using v4.1.20.1864 of Media Monkey and Windows 10 Home.

Thanks,
Graham

[Lowlander]

How are you syncing (exact steps)? Which version of iTunes and what iOS on the devices?

[ghines]

I plug the iOS device in and MediaMonkey scans it and displays the current storage allocated to each type of data (music, video etc.) on the bar graphic. Next to that graphic it says how much there is to sync and then I press "Auto Sync" and it does the sync. The sync itself is successful in that everything on the NAS drive that is supposed to be transferred is transferred. The issue is that after the sync (or, by massive coincidence, at about the same time), some of the music files are getting corrupted and/or deleted.

iTunes is 12.6.1.25 and iOS on both devices is 11.2.5

[Lowlander]

That's the right way to do it. So I suggest capturing a debug log of the sync (till you notice files being corrupted) (step 4b) and to attach the log to a Support Ticket: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=69

[ghines]

Without wishing to tempt fate, this problem seems to be resolved. I used the "Clear Database" option and had MM rebuild it from the directory contents. I have done a few syncs since then and the source files seem to be intact.

However, I do have a new unrelated issue that I will post separetely if I can't find an existing post on it.

[Ludek]

Just FYI: This build https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... d8#p466475
can auto-fix the corrupted files (i.e. non-MP3 files including ID3 tag on the beginning)