I am having a rather odd issue. I have a large media collection so I store what normally resides under APPDATA on an alternate drive and use Symbolic links so that the OS thinks its in the correct location. This has worked perfectly for a long time and I have no issues with it. The metadata, DB, and image files have now begun to outgrow the drive its on (this has happened before) and the move is always simple. Shut down Plex, Copy the entire Plex Media Server folder to the new location, recreate a new Symbolic Link to the new location, restart Plex and it picks up right where it left off. This time, I have followed the exact same process but moving the entire folder to a RAID6 Volume instead of a singular drive. When I start Plex all things look normal until new content is added, when new content is added Plex adds it into the library, fetches the metadata and art with no issues (With no issues according to the logs) but the Art for both the box and background never populate, although the metadata about the show or movie does. Thinking I had somehow corrupted the files or folders I have copied it in multiple ways but always end up with the same result. Since the copy didn't seem to work, I recreated the symbolic link back to the original data source, restarted Plex and it works perfectly, all new content gets added correctly and all of the art pulls down properly. I'm not sure where to go from here short of starting completely over (which would take a VERY long time for the amount of data). Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Did you perhaps put the new data location on a drive that itself is using a filesystem that doesn't support symlinks/hardlinks? (ReFS and some "drive pooling" implementations are known to have that issue, for instance.) That would explain the behavior you're seeing.
I looked up ReFS in Wiki it looks like Symbolic Links are supported but Hardlinks are not (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS) is there a way to redirect the APPDATA Plex folder to another drive within Plex so I don't need to use an alternate method?
So I moved a copy of the Plex Media Center folder to the ReFS volume and changed the advanced server setting to point to it and still have the same issue. Even with Plex going directly to the data (no Symbolic Links) the issue is still present, all text metadata shows up but no box image or background art. thank you in advance for the help
Server particulars: Windows Server 2012 R2, Plex appdata location as well as all content is stored on an ReFS volume.
No symlink tricks - just using the setting described in this thread.
Procedure used to move appdata content:
-Disable Auto Library Update
-Adjust appdata location setting (from C:\Users\\AppData\Local\ to E:\PlexMediaServerDB\)
-Shut down PMS
-Move the Plex Media Server folder to the location above
-Start PMS
-Manually update libraries
-Enable Auto Library Update
Observed behavior:
-All existing content, prior to moving the appdata location, works as expected: playable, and all metadata present (art and text).
-Newly added episodes (to an existing series/season) work as expected with all metadata present
-Completely new content (for example, a movie, or a brand new TV series) appear to download all metadata correctly, but art is not displayed (poster/banner/thumbnail).
-It is possible to manually select artwork, but the selection is not preserved across PMS restart
Doing some additional searching, it seems like ReFS is indeed the culprit: the way I understand it, Plex uses hardlinks inside its DB structure, and that's not supported on ReFS.
That's too bad - I know that ReFS doesn't quite have the maturity ZFS does, but it does have a couple of major Windows releases under its belt now.
If someone else hits this, move your appdata back to an NTFS volume, and force a library refresh.
Yes, my point was that the filesystem on which the Plex Media Server data directory resides needs to support symlinks/hardlinks. They're used extensively within the metadata bundles for library items.
So placing the data directory on a ReFS volume will definitely result in problems since that filesystem doesn't have the necessary support.
It's always possible that things could change in the future, but altering the way that metadata is stored for items would be a pretty massive undertaking. I wouldn't expect that it's likely to change in the short term. You should ensure that you keep your PMS data on a filesystem that supports symlinks/hardlinks.
I’m experiencing the same issue, even though my data folder is already on NTFS (SSD boot drive). I store any additional posters, fanart, etc. in the individual media folders housed on an ReFS RAID 10 volume
So even if you move your Plex “Application Data” folder to an NTFS volume, you still won’t see your “Personal Media” images in Plex if you store images with their respective titles on ReFS.
I’ve honestly been on the fence over implementing FreeNAS for it’s native ZFS support, but haven’t been compelled to do so since ReFS was close in features. This issue may have given me the final push to take the plunge. It’s either that or reformat with NTFS and rely on Crashplan backups.
