Version 1.5.5.0 32bit hard deleted all music in library, other files unaffected

2025-01-12 20:07:48

I know this is going to sound crazy,  but I've been using foobar2000 for years, and never had this happen before.

I keep foobar synced to my download directory, to effectively sort through songs I want to keep, deleting the bad ones and coping the rest elsewhere.

Today, as I was going through a directory with 500-800 files, it suddenly popped up the "processing" type window for just a second and all my music files disappeared from the library.

I first assumed I pressed the wrong key shortcut and a "Delete files" command was issued (I have this mapped to a keyboard shortcut for easy sorting of files), however, these files were NOT in my recycle bin.
What's more, all non foobar2000 sync files in the same directory, were 100% untouched (text files, album covers, folders, etc). 
This tells me it was really foobar which initiated it.

I tried using a file recovery tool right after before the data could be overwritten - it managed to find some (maybe all? no way to know) of the files. HOWEVER, of those, they were either unrecoverable, or corrupt when recovered (the restore app indicated either a secure delete had been issued or something in the file header had been overwritten).

Has anyone seen or heard of this happening before? Does anyone know if any bugs around bulk setting of tags or other issues with file handling have been resolved between 1.5.5 and the latest version?

I've upgraded to the latest version (and moved from 32 to 64 bit), but I am a bit afraid of this ever happening again, as I've lost untold hours of music here. I'd definitely feel more comfortable if I knew it was an identified bug which has been fixed in later versions.
 
That being said, foobar2000 is still the best program out there by far, and I can't imagine going back to any other media browser. So if I have to, I'll set my download directory to auto back up or something to avoid this in the future.

Re: Version 1.5.5.0 32bit hard deleted all music in library, other files unaffected

Reply #1 – 2025-01-12 22:06:48

Nobody likes being lectured after the fact, but if you had been keeping a regular backup of your valuable music files, recovering from this would be as easy as a sigh and one copy/paste operation.  This could have happened just as easily by a drive failing or hitting a forgotten global/other running app's shortcut key having nothing to do with Foobar per se.  Start the backup habit now and you'll never have to worry about it again.

Re: Version 1.5.5.0 32bit hard deleted all music in library, other files unaffected

Reply #2 – 2025-01-12 22:21:29

already on it sveakul, I do it for other permanent directories but thought no point in backing up download because it's meant to be very temporary storage. Unfortunately I've let some files accumulate for 2+ months in it. Which cost me big this time.

I was more just posting it because it seems like a very interesting and odd bug, found a related dead thread from 2017 indicating it might have to do with file tagging. Not at all mad at foobar or posting an entitled "how dare this free amazing software I've used every day for 10+ years without incident do this" type post, but I wanted to see if other people have encountered it or if it was identified in the code.

Re: Version 1.5.5.0 32bit hard deleted all music in library, other files unaffected

Reply #3 – 2025-01-12 23:03:41

Yeah, having a backup is important. I use robocopy to backup my music library to 2 other locations weekly.

Re: Version 1.5.5.0 32bit hard deleted all music in library, other files unaffected

Reply #4 – 2025-01-13 06:14:52

I can't remember a single user file deletion or corruption bug in the history of foobar2000. Every action taken by the player has been carefully thought out and when there is a possibility of data loss, risky operation is done with a temp file.

Exactly what kind of keyboard shortcuts do you have configured and what components are involved in them?

A few possible scenarios I can think of:
You accidentally commanded the File Operations -> Move action. Files were not deleted but instead moved somewhere. This doesn't trigger a warning.
You could do file deletion without using foobar2000's built-in feature, for example with foo_run. That would not trigger any warnings.
You have a full recycle bin or you have configured recycle bin to delete files immediately. That way if foobar2000 is configured to recycle without warning, the files would be deleted without warnings.

No component I know of has ever deleted files during tagging.