[Support]: Frigate database not cleaning up missing recordings after manual file deletion

[beginner2047]

Describe the problem you are having

I previously had a full disk issue on /media/frigate, so I manually deleted old preview clips and recordings to free up space. However, the Frigate database still shows those entries in the UI, even though no previews are available. The Storage Metrics page also continues to show usage above 90%.

When I try to right-click on an item in the Review page to delete it, the option isn’t available if the preview clip is missing. I can only right-click to delete when the preview is still visible.

Is there a way to clean up these old or missing records from the Frigate database?

Version

0.16.2

What browser(s) are you using?

No response

Frigate config file

N/A

Relevant Frigate log output

N/A

Relevant go2rtc log output

N/A

FFprobe output from your camera

N/A

Frigate stats

N/A

Install method

Docker Compose

docker-compose file or Docker CLI command

N/A

Object Detector

Other

Network connection

Wired

Camera make and model

N/A

Screenshots of the Frigate UI's System metrics pages

No response

Any other information that may be helpful

No response

[inkeep-ai-assistant[bot]]

Frigate provides a specific feature to handle this exact situation. When recording files are deleted manually but database entries remain, you can enable recordings sync to clean up orphaned database entries (1).

To resolve this issue, add the following configuration to your Frigate config (1):

record:
  sync_recordings: True

(1)

This feature tells Frigate to check the file system and delete any database entries for files that don't exist (1). However, there's an important limitation: this feature is meant to fix variations in files, not completely delete entries in the database (1). If you deleted all of your media, the documentation recommends not using sync_recordings, but instead stopping Frigate, deleting the frigate.db database, and restarting (1).

Since you only deleted some files to free up space, enabling sync_recordings should clean up the orphaned database entries and resolve the issue where the UI shows missing recordings and the Storage Metrics display incorrect usage.

📚 Sources:

1. Recording

---

Have another question? Just tag @inkeep.

[beginner2047]

After enabling it, the following messages appeared in the logs:

2025-10-19 17:01:41.587673032  [2025-10-19 18:01:41] frigate.record.util            INFO    : Deleting 798633 recording DB entries with missing files
2025-10-19 17:01:48.552577148  [2025-10-19 18:01:48] frigate.record.util            ERROR   : Database error during recordings db cleanup: database disk image is malformed

Does this mean the database cleanup failed?

[NickM-27]

yes, seems like the database is corrupt. You can try fixing this by shutting down Frigate and using sqlite3 directly, or just delete the current DB and recordings

[beginner2047]

How can I fix this issue directly using sqlite3?
Which SQL statements should I run to clean up or repair the database?

[NickM-27]

You can confirm if it’s corrupt

sqlite3 frigate.db "PRAGMA integrity_check;"

If it comes back with an error then you can:

sqlite3 frigate.db ".dump" > new.sql
sqlite3 new.db "PRAGMA integrity_check;"
mv frigate.db old.db
sqlite3 frigate.db < new.sql

[beginner2047]

sqlite3 frigate.db "PRAGMA integrity_check;"
row 14 missing from index recordings_api_recordings_summary
non-unique entry in index recordings_path
row 284951 missing from index recordings_path

The solution worked perfectly, and the database has been repaired. Most old recordings have been removed from the DB. frigate.record.cleanup is still running to expire the recordings

Really appreciate it.

[bracklanna]

This is a tag-along comment related to, but not exactly the same as the start of this support query --

In the Review pane of the Frigate web interface, when I manually select one or more clips and then use the Delete button to delete them, the clips are deleted, but I notice on careful inspection of the Frigate database that the associated database entries for those clips are NOT deleted.

Is there a reason why Frigate would want (or prefer) to keep Event database entries even for clips that were intentionally and specifically deleted by the end user?

A major reason for manually deleting clips is user privacy. It would seem that to fully honor the user's possible privacy concerns and their clip-deletion request, it would be best to also immediately delete & purge the database event entries associated with the to-be-deleted clip(s). (Within a few seconds at most, not merely flagging or marking them for possible garbage collection at some indeterminate future time.)

[NickM-27]

You're mixing a lot of terms so it is difficult to understand what behavior you're saying.

There are no "clips" database entries. There are review items, recordings, and events (which are tracked objects).

When you delete something in the review page the related recordings and review item are deleted.