[Support] Missing files after restarting docker containers

[0100101101011010]

What's your question or issue?

A while ago I did a fresh re-install of paperless-ngx using the official recommended docker compose files.

But I found that for some reason, after restarting the docker compose project, the Consume folder was no longer working - documents weren't being processed after adding to this folder. Therefore, I decided to restart everything - I used docker compose down, edited the volume mount paths per below, then used docker compose up to recreate the containers. In the meantime, I had uploaded and processed over ~100 files using drag-and-drop into the web ui.

Old configuration:

    volumes:
      - data:/usr/src/paperless/data
      - media:/usr/src/paperless/media
      - ./export:/usr/src/paperless/export
      - ./consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume

New configuration:

    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/paperless-ngx/data:/usr/src/paperless/data
      - /volume1/docker/paperless-ngx/media:/usr/src/paperless/media
      - /volume1/docker/paperless-ngx/export:/usr/src/paperless/export
      - /volume1/docker/paperless-ngx/consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume

Other than that I did not change the docker-compose file at all.

The problem: after restarting, none of those ~100 files can be found anywhere in my /volume1/docker/paperless-ngx/ folder. When I try to view a document in the web ui, the thumbnail is missing and clicking on it gives me the following error:

HTTP 404 Not Found
Allow: GET, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "detail": "Not found."
}

I guess the missing files are caused by changing my mount paths, but I can't figure out where these files are saved now. Stopping/removing containers shouldn't remove any saved documents, right? So they should be somewhere, but how can I find where they are saved?

What have you tried?

I've looked in my /volume1/docker/paperless-ngx/ folder for the missing files. It contains the following subfolders:

• consume
• data
• db
• export
• media
• redis

And I haven't been able to locate the missing files in any of the folders.

Paperless-ngx version

2.20.3

Host OS

Container Manager in Synology NAS

Installation method

Docker - official image

System status

{
    "pngx_version": "2.20.3",
    "server_os": "Linux-4.4.302+-x86_64-with-glibc2.41",
    "install_type": "docker",
    "storage": {
        "total": 34528444686336,
        "available": 5835381600256
    },
    "database": {
        "type": "postgresql",
        "url": "paperless",
        "status": "OK",
        "error": null,
        "migration_status": {
            "latest_migration": "guardian.0003_remove_groupobjectpermission_guardian_gr_content_ae6aec_idx_and_more",
            "unapplied_migrations": []
        }
    },
    "tasks": {
        "redis_url": "redis://broker:6379",
        "redis_status": "OK",
        "redis_error": null,
        "celery_status": "OK",
        "celery_url": "celery@ecbf982e8c84",
        "celery_error": null,
        "index_status": "OK",
        "index_last_modified": "2025-12-24T00:00:16.394971-05:00",
        "index_error": null,
        "classifier_status": "OK",
        "classifier_last_trained": "2025-12-24T21:05:09.217680Z",
        "classifier_error": null,
        "sanity_check_status": "ERROR",
        "sanity_check_last_run": "2025-12-21T05:30:35.879779Z",
        "sanity_check_error": "192 issues found. Check logs for details."
    },
    "websocket_connected": "OK"
}

Relevant logs or output

No response

[shamoon]

You changed the volume mount to a bind mount. Essentially you had your files in one place and then you told paperless to look for them in another location, where they don’t exist. Perhaps do some reading about volume vs bind mounts etc. in docker generally but I assume changing the paths to their previous would restore things

[0100101101011010]

Yeah, I figured that was the issue, but after reverting the data and media file paths in my docker-compose file to what they were originally, those documents are still showing as NOT FOUND.

[bernd3k]

If the volumes are still the ones from before and not some new ones with the same name (e.g. some executed docker volume prune etc. before), the files should indeed still be there.

Open a session on your container and check at the mount point what you see there.

[0100101101011010]

Thank you both for the tips, I finally managed to figure out how to recover them. This was a bit painful and I'm pretty sure there's a simpler way but leaving my method here in case it helps someone else. I will make sure to always use bind mounts instead of volumes in the future because I like being able to access the files on my host machine, and volumes is too difficult to wrap my head around.

1. open terminal on computer
2. enable ssh in synology nas via control panel > terminal & snmp > terminal > enable ssh service
3. ssh into nas as root user
4. run docker volume ls

example of the printout i got:

DRIVER    VOLUME NAME
local     0b0702d6fb75cfade75fb388bcz426bfb4e0f4599582f7c5d2bea1d3ad2d6cc7
local     0c18d01ea2w2df3d3a8b9e1d18e3cacabeef12fcd405e88687338wdc66d47fl0
local     1dec4cc5apo1efaa835af82bba421be7b6797c3ecd672d21de50bd289f2a5d26
local     2fe29b85f28ea45ce41bcbb7bbdf2fg0189ceed4d9f0c346e4a81f14ec7a3b44
local     7c7219332c7f971f3baa4e7c1b487c201d9ae348b1214e6c9d0eb49bfda51963
local     paperless-ngx_data
local     paperless-ngx_media
local     paperless-ngx_pgdata
local     paperless-ngx_redisdata

5. the volumes with the long string names were where the missing documents were saved.
6. i used docker volume inspect volumename to find the mountpoint of each volume, eg. docker volume inspect 0b0702d6fb75cfade75fb388bcz426bfb4e0f4599582f7c5d2bea1d3ad2d6cc7
7. then i used cp -a /dockervolume/mountpoint/_data/. /path/to/folder/in/host to copy all the contents of each volume to a folder on my host directory (to make it visible to me, since i couldn't figure out how to view the documents in the docker volume directly), eg. cp -a /volume1/@docker/volumes/0b0702d6fb75cfade75fb388bcz426bfb4e0f4599582f7c5d2bea1d3ad2d6cc7/_data/. /Users/redactedname/Downloads/exportfolder
8. then i could open exportfolder on my computer and find the files that were missing and manually add them to the current bind mount file path (/volume1/docker/paperless-ngx/media in my case)
9. i ran document_sanity_checker a few times during this process to help me narrow down the files that were still missing and needed to be matched.
10. after i was sure all the documents had been restored (ie. document_sanity_checker was no longer throwing up errors), i ran docker volume prune to delete all of those long string-name volumes since they are no longer used by my containers. this cleared up around 1.5 GB of space.

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