Backup just what's added

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

My plex install/directory is huge.
I want to back it up, but only what’s added and not any caches or images.
Meaning I don’t want to have to add/scan my movies, music, and tv again if a catastrophe happens.
I want to retain the library, but it’d be fine if the next install or restore had to redownload metadata and images.
It took me weeks to scan my media library and I just want to retain what took me weeks to scan, not what will take maybe a day or 2 to download in posters etc.

Which files do I back up?

2

Separating posters from the chapter index files (the biggest consumer of space) and all the other data is not a trivial task.

Futher, PMS’s database is expecting those files and the directory structure created to hold them.

If I may ask,

  1. How big is the database in GB? ( du -ms /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library)
  2. How many files (approx) do you have indexed?
  3. When you view your content, do you use the chapter index images as you seek ?
3
  1. (du -ms /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library ) command has been running about 15 minutes. I have 24G ram, 1TB HDD, 8 core Xenon processor
  2. 900 movies, 300 television series with about 6 seasons each on average, 33,000 flac albums.
  3. No, I don’t do chapter indexes( i feel like that would take months)
  4. Scanning all my music took about 3-4 weeks.
4 
➜  ~ du -ms /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library
12806	/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library
➜  ~
5

Thanks for that info. It tells a great deal.

You really don’t want to separate the database from the structures / posters / other metadata.
It would take weeks again because of all the music and related info (which is stored in the files).

My operational DB is just under 14GB. which includes all the metadata, posters, and PMS database. You’re showing just under 13 GB

Here is my library:

Spaced used: 13.9 GB
tar.gzip: 11GB

[/share/PlexData] # du -ms .
13978	.
[/share/PlexData] # tar cfz ./PlexBackup.tar.gz ./Library
[/share/PlexData] # ls -lah PlexBackup.tar.gz 
-rw-r--r-- 1 admin administrators 11G 2019-07-25 23:44 PlexBackup.tar.gz
[/share/PlexData] #

IMHO, that’s good considering how much I have indexed:

I have 72,189 files index (movies, series episodes, and music) of which music is the largest.

[chuck@lizum /vie.237]$ find movie* tv* *music* animated 4k uhd -print | wc -l
72189
[chuck@lizum /vie.238]$

If you make a tar.gz of the ./Library directory, with PMS stopped, you’re guaranteed to have a perfect snapshot. In this form, you could use it as the foundation for cloning to another machine if ever desired.

6

no worries, i’ll do backups once a week.
thanks again

7

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.