wondering if there is a way to preserve all the work i put into my media server …
i noticed that the server settings section (in Troubleshooting) has an option to download the database, and I thought that was what i’m looking for but not sure …
i sorted, arranged, organized, chosen album arts, fixed matches, etc. for my libraries, and the footprint of plex media server on my nas is about 11GB. I want to preserve all of that, and wondering if i should approach this from the command line rather than use ‘Download Databases’.
i say that because when doing a download database, the file generated is about 28MB, which obviously does not contain all the customizations I’ve made to my libraries … unless this assumption is wrong ?
just looking for a way to take a complete snapshot of the server, zip all of that and store it somewhere should anything go wrong with Plex I could restore it all down the road.
thank you very much for that, looks like exactly what i need … it seems like it’s also automated by pms if the share folder exists …
if i’m reading it correctly, I manually create a PlexData shared folder, stop the pms, then restart it … but step 3 in " Setting up and administering the PlexData share" i’m not sure whether that’s a step i must do ? this would be first time setup of the share.
any options/switches in pms settings that must be enabled in order for this to work ?
The PlexData shared folder contains a single entry which points to the internal QPKG storage area where PMS is stored.
On QNAP, we have the “Migrate To” feature.
In order to support Migrate To, the entry in PlexData had to be dynamic (created when PMS starts) and under the control of the start scripting.
When that scripting code was written, a user who already had a PlexData share for his media discovered the conflict.
Because the user’s media was in PlexData, and there was a link to the internal program storage for PMS, PMS could too easily end up scanning itself like what it does when media files change.
To remedy that vulnerability, I added the ability to stop the startup scripting from creating the “Plex Media Server” entry in the “PlexData” shared folder.
To use the PlexData share to make backups, or to restore.
Create the shared folder (exact “PlexData” capitalization) anywhere you want. It will use only 4K bytes of storage.
Start & stop PMS once.
Open FileStation → PlexData shared folder
Observe “Plex Media Server” entry and click it.
FileStation now shows you the live PMS internal files
Highlight ALL the files (or check the box at the top)
Right-Click → Compress
When the ZIP file is complete, Move it to wherever you want or download it.
Start PMS again.
To Restore:
As stated in the documentation, the restoration is the reverse.
Create PlexData
Reinstall PMS (if necessary)
Start then stop PMS one time.
Open the PlexData shared folder and click “Plex Media Server”
Observe you now see the PMS data files created by the base install.
Highlight and remove everything you see
COPY your Backup ZIP file into the directory
Right-click the ZIP file and Unzip it.
When complete, all your PMS internal files (metadata) will have been restored.
thats a nice to have feature. knowing i can snapshot the entire state of pms and restore it if needed is reassuring ….
with several thousand pieces of media not having to re-sort and reorganize if something goes wrong is great.
is there concern about restoring PlexData to a version of pms that is older ? if there is i should keep track of the pms version i’m on when saving the PlexData somewhere else so just append the zip filename with the pms version it originated from.
edit:
looks like it may take a while for the Plex Media Server folder to fill up … i can’t get QTS or Finder to show it’s size … should i keep pms running and avoid any nas reboots until the folder is fully populated ? don’t have any indicator concerning that …
gave it some time in case the folder had to populate. for some strange reason it shows up as 70 bytes in File Station properties. In finder the get info panel would remain at ‘Calculating’ for a while so i assume File Station was not reporting the latest folder size which was weird.
i decided to go ahead and zip it in file station and the resulting zip was around 9.5GB. not sure what’s going on with folder size reporting …
is this Plex Media Server folder always updated whenever something changes on the server such as adding media, changing metadata, etc. … or do i have to stop/start the pms in order to get the folder to update ?
thanks again for referring this feature, really like how plex is built with flexibility in mind and hopefully some day it will be the main way i access media across all my devices.