So I’m preparing to do a re-install of Windows and want to make sure I’ve backed up everything I need for Plex. I know what the support article says and I’ve backed up the [%LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server] folder and exported the [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Plex, Inc.\Plex Media Server] registry key. Is that absolutely all I need? Does it backup all my libraries including playlists and collections, all settings and user accounts? Is there anything else that couldn’t hurt to be backed up? Is there anything that won’t be backed up (or will be reset) and I should be prepared to re-do? The support article says it’s not necessary to include the Cache folder so I haven’t, but is there anything else that maybe isn’t too important and could be left out? It is a huge folder and the smaller it can be the better, to save time restoring it.
You can skip the updates, logs, and crash reports folders too, but that won’t save a ton of space. Something that would probably help speed-wise would be to compress the local app folder before transferring it to your backup drive.
Otherwise, yeah, the registry key and the local app folder are all that you’ll need.
Thank you very much.
One note Windows-specific. Make sure that your external drives remap to the same drive letters when you reinstall Windows. Otherwise Plex will do a re-scan and it might be a tad funky.
If they are wrong after the install, you can change the drive letter this way:
Not sure about your storage situation. But it wouldnt hurt to have something like a Veeam capture as a last resort fallback. I know having that has saved me before.
Oh yes, definitely. One of the first things I do after a re-install is to re-assign drive letter for my external hard drives.
Thanks I’ll check it out.
Make sure that you did this while the server software was not running. Otherwise you will probably end up with a damaged/incomplete database.
Thanks, all done and dusted. Got it up and running again with no problems at all.
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