Generally, my advice for moving Plex server to a different Windows machine is this:
Keep everything the same, regarding the storage locations of your media.
i.e. all media items should be accessible under the same drive letter, folder path and file names as they were on the old server.
I do not recommend doing a complete reorganization of your media files during the move.
Most importantly: assign the same drive letters to the same hard drives. The same applies to network file shares, if they are mounted to a drive letter.
I have done a server move three times now in this manner, and never lost any data due to the move.
With that out of the way:
This usually means either:
- you have copied the data while either the source and/or the target plex server were still running. If you do that, you’ll end up with a damaged primary database file in the copy.
- the source machine (and thus plex server, too) was not cleanly shut down, leading to the damage of the primary database file.
The cure for case 1) is to copy the database folder again, this time making sure that both source and target have no Plex running.
The cure for case 2) (and 1) as well) is this: https://support.plex.tv/articles/202485658-restore-a-database-backed-up-via-scheduled-tasks/
Once you have successfully finished either method, it is highly recommended to use this batch file to automatically repair and optimize your database file: PlexDBRepair/Windows at master · ChuckPa/PlexDBRepair · GitHub
