Errors received when I did a Data Integrity Scan where did the attachments go #99394

https://thebrain.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/99394

Hello Lisa,

Thank you for sending the scan results. I understand why this looks concerning, so let me clarify what those messages mean and what happened to your attachments.

First, the good news:

This does not indicate ongoing corruption, and the Data Integrity Scan did exactly what it is designed to do.

Here’s how to interpret the messages you saw:

Duplicate attachments removed

In a few cases, the scan detected duplicate attachment entries that were both pointing to the same underlying file. In those situations, it kept one valid attachment and removed the duplicate reference. No content was lost there.

Attachments removed because the file could not be found

For the longer list of image and file IDs, the scan removed attachment records that no longer had an associated file available locally or on the server.

This usually happens when:

• The file was previously deleted outside of TheBrain
• A sync or upload was interrupted at some point
• A local cache was cleared or replaced
• TheBrain crashed while attachments were mid-sync

In other words, these were orphaned attachment references.

TheBrain was aware of the attachment entry, but the actual file was no longer present anywhere it could access. The scan removed those broken references to keep the Brain consistent and stable.

Where did the attachments go?

Unfortunately, if the file itself was no longer present locally or on the server, there is nothing for TheBrain to recover automatically. The scan did not delete usable files, it only cleaned up references to files that were already missing.

What should you do now?

• If you still have copies of any of those files elsewhere (for example in backups, photos folders, cloud storage, or email), you can safely re-attach them to the relevant thoughts.
• If you notice any unexpected behavior going forward, please let me know, but based on this report your Brain is now in a clean and consistent state.

Best regards,

John