Unavailable Content

Occasionally, when you try to play content or look at details for a media item, your Plex Media Server may tell you that the content is unavailable.

You may see an error along the lines of:

Please check that the file exists and the necessary drive is mounted

Basically, this means that your Plex Media Server couldn’t find the content at the expected location. More technically, the Server was unable to find the expected filename at the expected filepath.

Why is the Content Unavailable?

There are multiple reasons why a media item might be unavailable:

• The file has been renamed
• The file has moved
• The drive on which the file is stored is not mounted (e.g. a USB drive is not plugged in)
• The drive on which the file is stored is mounted with a different name. This can happen unintentionally sometimes if the drive is improperly removed and then plugged back in, which can cause it to mount with a new name.
• The computer account under which Plex Media Server is running does not have the correct filesystem permissions to access the content location or the content files.

If you look in your Plex Web App at the media item and click the Unavailable icon, you’ll see the expected full filepath and filename listed. You can use that information to help investigate whether the expected filename exists at the expected filepath.

The Plex support forums are a great resource if you’re having issues with content not being found.

Related Page: Plex Support Forums