I am moving my Plex server - windows 10 to windows 10 and the Plex ‘how to’ is all straightforward enough.
Before moving it makes sense to do some housekeeping - no point transferring junk from one location to another.
Any tips on what I can remove?
Update packages?
Old databases files?
Plugins - I set up Plex just on the cusp of the change in 3rd party plugins. I have several plug in folders in the file structure, and 2 show in the Plex back end, Filmon and Webtools, neither of which will uninstall from the admin panel.
Anything else I can delete to slim the install down?
Thanks
You can clear out the cache files to help slim things down (should be just images), database files should be small enough where you don’t need to remove any of them. The most time consuming thing to move will be metadata - depending on your libraries sizes there can be a LOT.
To remove your old plugins, you’ll need to delete the files from the plugins directory, I can’t remember where they’re stored on Windows.
Thanks @kazz3r24 , that is helpful. I was wondering about metadata - do you know if it relates just to the current media collection, or since the beginning of the server instance? If it is since the beginning I may well delete and regather in the new location - i changed file structures and methods so much in the early days when figuring stuff out that many of the GB will be irrelevant now.
Does meta include the detect intros feature? I’m not sure where or how that would be saved, but it does take a huge amount of time so wouldn’t want to repeat that unnecessarily in the new location.
In terms of metadata, that’s going to be all of your media artwork (posters, backgrounds, etc). It’ll be only for what’s currently stored on the server, any “old” data will likely have been taken care of by the housekeeping tasks if you have the maintenance options enabled (refresh metadata every 3 days, empty recycle bin after scans, etc).
Changing your file structure won’t have any affect on this, and I’m not certain about where intro detection info is kept but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t stored in the database.
The times I’ve done an operation like this, I clear out the cache folder and that’s about it - then I just go through the rest of the procedure like normal. My main concern is always user watched statuses, but I do believe there’s a Plex SQLite tool that can be used to migrate that.
Highly recommend if you can’t find documentation for that particular step, to ask a moderator. I won’t tag them here so I don’t annoy them, but Chuckpa was the mod who told me about the sqlite tool, full disclosure though, I’m on Linux (so are they), so my steps are quite different from yours but the gist will be the same.
Even then, if you’re just transplanting your Plex install from one system to another watched statuses etc may be there for you after you move everything over.
Thanks again @kazz3r24
I assumed old metadata would be removed during housekeeping, but in that context can’t understand why there is so much of it, as in how many files and the GB they occupy. Anyway, it’s no biggie is it and you’ve reassured me i’m not wasting my time copying junk.
Funnily enough I came across the database editing tool today when looking at the best way of maintaining music playlists through the move. Though following the Plex instructions does make the move itself fairly straightforward in keeping the libraries up and running, as I understand it I will lose all playlists, which would be a shame. If I’d known Plex uses its own Playlist format that can’t be shared outside, nor transferred in the case of file and folder moves, i’d have never included my music library and spent so many hours on playlists.
But I have, so best i get my sql hat on. What could go wrong eh?
Yeah, unfortunately playlists are a whole new thing for me. I only recently started playing with them so that’s a step I would have missed too.
As for metadata and how much space it occupies, that’s all dependent on how much content you have in your libraries. For instance, I have over 890GB worth of metadata in my server. The databases themselves are quite small, but the metadata is where the meat is. My metadata and databases are all on a dedicated SSD.
Always make backups before tinkering!
