Add protected status in addition to monitored and unmonitored

[crazygambit]

Right now unmonitored episodes aren’t automatically downloaded and replaced with a new file, but they can still be overwritten by manually downloading a file. This is a problem on certain shows with inconsistent numbering and some long running animes that don’t have the release group’s name in brackets and are thus parsed as regular shows converting episode 101 into S01E01 and replacing it. Sometimes a sequel is named too close to the original (or whole new shows are considered a second season of the first in anime) and the new episodes end up replacing the old.

What I’m proposing is an additional status that would protect those files from ever being overwritten and deleted by sonarr by mistake. The files could still be manually downloaded, there would just be an extra copy. The naming should still be different if they have different release groups or quality, but if not a simple (1) would suffice. Sonarr would only need to keep track of the first file.

Also sometimes you don’t know which release has better quality and it would be nice to have both at the same time, compare and get rid of the lower quality one. Right now you can accomplish something like that, by downloading to a temp folder and then manually moving the files outside sonarr.

It would be nice to do this within sonarr and having the extra protection for some old and hard to find episodes would give me peace of mind.

It doesn’t seem like a huge undertaking and I feel it could be worthwhile for many users.

[Thirrian]

This is already built-in, if you set up and use the Recycling Bin option under Media Management.

[crazygambit]

Not quite. If you set up the recycling bin, now you have to manually empty it after every regular episode gets upgraded with better quality, instead of protecting a select few important episodes with the protected status like I’m proposing.

Instead of giving you peace of mind, now you have to actively pay attention to an extra step.

Something closer to the functionality I’m suggesting is to delete the show from Sonarr entirely once it’s done downloading. This is problematic for ongoing shows though, since you won’t be able to get new episodes. You also can’t delete only a few seasons or episodes from a show (this would functionally be pretty close to what I’m after).

[Thirrian]

Manual search overrides the monitored/unmonitored flag, because, well, you’re manually searching and picking an episode so sonarr assumes that you know what you’re doing. E.g. you have a good reason to search for an unmonitored episode, and a good reason to pick release xyz.
If it turns out it’s a bad release anyway, the recycle bin is there to the rescue.

Files in the recycle bin folder configured in Sonarr are deleted every 7 days. No need to manually delete stuff if you have some disk space (which I assume you have, since you want to sort-of-but-not-really keep multiple copies of the same episode for a limited time).
I’m guessing you’re checking those downloads “immediately”, so there should be plenty of time to restore if need be.