Every time I plug in any USB external HDD, there is $RECYCLE.BIN showing at the top of what is on the HDD. This is the path: Videos\Files\name of the hdd$RECYCLE.BIN
How do I hide $RECYCLE.BIN ?
How is the drive formatted?
It is NTFS.
I donāt get that, either in the Videos/Files tree or in Settings/File manager. What I do get, annoyingly, is System Volume Information.
Now itās possible Iāve never plugged that USB disk into a Windows PC and deleted files from it.
If you are not interested in the recycle bin, I would guess itās safe to delete $RECYCLE.BIN, but you will probably need admin privileges on a PC to do it.
The recycle bin is made by Windows. You can delete it in Linux but it will come back as soon as it is plugged into a Windows OS again. This will be true even if you disable the recycle bin in Windows. Not all NTFS drives will have a recycle bin available to them, most notably small thumb drives.
It is generally recommended to not store media on the root of the drive but regardless it can be hidden from the video>files view by creating an advancedsettings.xml file with the following (I just tested this and it works). Note that this is different than the file manager in settings which does not respect the Kodi filters.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<advancedsettings>
<video>
<excludefromscan action="append">
<regexp>System Volume Information</regexp>
</excludefromscan>
<excludefromscan action="append">
<regexp>\$recycle</regexp>
</excludefromscan>
<excludefromlisting action="append">
<regexp>System Volume Information</regexp>
</excludefromlisting>
<excludefromlisting action="append">
<regexp>\$recycle</regexp>
</excludefromlisting>
</video>
</advancedsettings>
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I get the System Volume Information as well, forgot to mention that. Now I know why they show, I will just pretend I donāt see them. lol.
Thanks for your help.
Orā¦ since I gave you the solution on how to hide them, you could just ssh andā¦
nano ~/.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml
and then just paste in that block of xml I posted above, ctl+x, y, enter, then restart Kodi to make it take effect withā¦
systemctl restart mediacenter
Yes, I should be adventurous. I will do as you have suggested. Will that hide āSystem Volume Informationā as well?
Of course it will. I see that in your instructions.
Just did what you suggested to my Vero 4K+ and those two pesky items no longer show.
I will now go and do the same to the older Vero 4K in the bedroom.
I am glad I had kept your instructions on how cut and paste, etc, from when you helped me out with the Subs & Audio Passthrough mapping to particular keys on the remote.
Thanks for your help 
Happy New Year .
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This does not work for me.
It still scans System Volume Information and $RECYCLE.BIN.
I did systemctl restart mediacenter, is there anything else I have to do?
Are you saying it hides those two folders but the scraper is still scanning those locations? I would need you to provide a Kodi log in order to ascertain where the issue is.
I havenāt checked if the folders are hidden, but they are definitly still getting scanned. I will check in a few hours if the folders are still visible.
I included that for completeness but using the root of a drive for a media source is not an ideal way to configure things. Your Kodi log is what would be most insightful as that would allow me to see if your advancedsettings.xml is correct and loading.
Why is that?
I have many external HDDās that I store Movies and TV series on. Typically ,on a new HDD, I would have folders named: Movies Remux, 4K Movies, TV Series, 4K TV Series , etc. Then I place media inside those folders. I have done that for many years and have had no problems because of that placement, that I am aware of.
Folders in the root of a drive is not the same thing as putting your files there. One reason is that you often have other files such as the recycle bin there and that can really mess with scraping. Another is that it limits that drive to a single source file type if your scraping that path. It is also really bad organization if your talking about anything more than something like a thumb drive that you use to shuffle a few file back and forth. You can do it, it is not going to break something, but it is not best practices either.
OK. How would you place Movies and TV Series on an NTFS formatted external HDD?
Apart from a couple of thumb drives that are FAT32, all my externals from 1TB through to 5TB are formatted as NTFS. The āscrapingā part I have no understanding of, as I only ever watch my stuff from the external HDDs, that I plug & unplug, depending on which one has the file I wish to view.
Your method is already the way it should be it sounds like. What Iām talking about, and Iām just going to use Windows file paths as an example for clarity.
Your external drive is E:\ and this is root. If you hadā¦
E:\home.movie.mkv
E:\movie.mkv
E:\TVshow.s01e01.mkv
E:\music.mp3
E:\picture.jpg
Then the only place you could set a source and apply a scraper would be E:. You could only set it for one content type and you will have issues if there is a hidden recycle bin which will also be stored at E:. The proper way to set this up would be something likeā¦
E:\Misc\home.movie.mkv
E:\Movies\name of movie\movie.mkv
E:\TV_Shows\name of show\TVshow.s01e01.mkv
E:\Music\Artist\Album\music.mp3
E:\Pictures\orginization\picture.jpg
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It looks like I am close to what you have demonstrated as in my āMovies Remuxā folder, for example, I place a Sub Folder named after the movie & then place the .mkv movie in it. I do that for all my media types.
Well, almost all as I now realise that on most of my HDDās, there are a number of movies that are not in any folder and just sit below the folders. Should I place them in their own named folder?
You can do it either way. Placing each in its own subfolder gives a bit more flexibility with things like āsubā subfolders and allowing for certain types of extra artwork but for most peoples setups it can be done either way or a mix of the two. I think their might be some speed advantage to scraping with the āall movies are in their own subfolderā option checked but I havenāt tested it to be sure. I will point out that it is rare for me to manually rename or move anything as I use FileBot which matches the files to a scraper and organizes them according to rules Iāve set. There are other programs that can do this as well. Iāve never found manually organizing all that entertaining.
Right there is why you are suited to be a Moderator here, whereas I, an Old Fart with very little hair to pull out, am quite content to be a member of this excellent forum, learning as I go.
Now I must take my leave of you and dive into Cyberpunk 2077 on my Xbox One X.
Thanks for your help.