# Resuming interrupted import starts over

**URL:** <https://discourse.beets.io/t/resuming-interrupted-import-starts-over/465>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [September 5, 2018, 1:50am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/resuming-interrupted-import-starts-over/465 "2018-09-05T01:50:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![djmike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9f8e36/32.png) [@djmike](https://discourse.beets.io/u/djmike)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 1:50am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/resuming-interrupted-import-starts-over/465/1 "2018-09-05T01:50:42Z")

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Hi - I’m new here. Searched the docs and the forums and only found one topic that didn’t have a solution. The importer seems semi-stable. I’m importing with something pretty straightforward:

beet import -g --group-albums

using only one plugin:

plugins: fromfilename

the first 15 albums I’ve tried to import it has crashed 3-4 times. So I’ve found myself restarting the import again. But every single time I restart, it puts me right back at the very start. My state.pickle has all kinds of stuff in it:

\<80\>^C}q^@X^K^@^@^@tagprogressq^A}q^B(N]q^CC\<81\>/Volumes/Backup Mania/Amazon Music Backup/(!!! Chk Chik Chick)/Strange Weather, Isn t It/01-04- Jamie, My Intentions Are Bass.mp3q^DaC(/Volumes/BackupMania/Amazon Music Backupq^E]q^F(C\<80\>/Volumes/BackupMania/Amazon Music Backup/(!!! Chk Chik Chick)/Strange Weather, Isn t It/01-04- Jamie, My Intentions Are Bass.mp3q^GC\<80\>/Volumes/BackupMania/Amazon Music Backup/(!!! Chk Chik Chick)/Strange Weather, Isn t It/01-04- Jamie, My Intentions Are Bass.mp3C\_/Volumes/BackupMania/Amazon Music Backup/10cc/Food For Thought/-01- DJ Set Food For Thought.mp3q C\_/Volumes/BackupMania/Amazon Music Backup/10cc/Food For Thought/-01- DJ Set Food For Thought.mp3q  
[…much more…]

etc. I’m not sure what the odd characters are in that file, or what the format of this file is.

I’m not thrilled about the crashes, but when I’ve gutted through re-doing everything the crashes don’t come up again. So, not the end of the world, but it’s a 100% no go for me on Beets if I cannot pick up where I left off.

Ideas? Thanks!

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**Author:** ![djmike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9f8e36/32.png) [@djmike](https://discourse.beets.io/u/djmike)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 2:00am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/resuming-interrupted-import-starts-over/465/2 "2018-09-05T02:00:02Z")

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Hmm, in reviewing my post I can see that maybe renaming my hard drive to not have spaces has created an inconsistent state.pickle. At one point I had to change my hard drive name because I suspected Beets was choking on the space in the name.

I blew away the musiclibrary.db file after changing the hard drive name - probably should have blown away state.pickle too.

Gonna try again 100% (I hope) fresh…

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**Author:** ![adrian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/adrian/32/4_2.png) [@adrian](https://discourse.beets.io/u/adrian)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 2:02am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/resuming-interrupted-import-starts-over/465/3 "2018-09-05T02:02:57Z")

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Hi! I’m pretty sure that import resuming won’t work with `--group-albums`. It currently tries to track which _directories_ have been imported, but that option doesn’t use directories as the unit of import.

FWIW, the format of the file is Python [pickle](https://docs.python.org/3/library/pickle.html) data.

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**Author:** ![djmike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9f8e36/32.png) [@djmike](https://discourse.beets.io/u/djmike)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 2:06am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/resuming-interrupted-import-starts-over/465/4 "2018-09-05T02:06:37Z")

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I think I may misunderstand what group albums does from the documentation. I’m going to try the default import command and see how far I get. Thanks for the response!