Migrating Metadata from Synology to Windows 10

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Hey all,

I’ve decided to revive my old i7 3770k box and turn it into a full time Plex server, using my Synology 1815+ only as an actual proper NAS backup. The benefits being redundancy, cheap online backups, and of course, hardware transcoding.

Reading this support article it seems very straight-forward and easy:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/

However, I’m running into some obstacles in regards to copying all of the Plex Media Server files. Right now, PMS is shut down on my Synology and not running, but I’m still unable to copy a lot of the files.

Some of the files will copy, but for example, all of the files in Plex Media Server/Metadata give a Permissions error no matter which account I log in with.

I tried zipping the entire PMS folder, but it also errors out on the Metadata folders like this:

zip warning: name not matched: Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata/Movies/e/512f6e0fd8a6787d922e50a5619d4fb1df4f82d.bundle/Contents/_combined/posters/com.plexapp.agents.imdb_1f1d60007d9991866eaf6fc2b8fba07b9a402e75

Starting a fresh install from scratch without all of my custom posters, corrected titles, fixed matches, split files, and various other info seems… daunting.

Any suggestions on what I’m doing wrong would be appreciated.

1 Like
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Just an update, going one-by-one I was actually able to copy every thing except some stuff in the Metadata folder.

Digging deeper, it’s really only two specific deep directories inside of the _combined folders that have problems:

  • Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata/Movies/0/0c3d27f4fff23be17b502ab28e674c70290a179.bundle/Contents/_combined/art/
  • Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata/Movies/0/0c3d27f4fff23be17b502ab28e674c70290a179.bundle/Contents/_combined/posters/

Interestingly, I can copy these successfully:

Contents/_stored/
Contents/com.plexapp.agents.imdb/
Contents/com.plexapp.agents.localmedia/
Contents/com.plexapp.agents.themoviedb/

I can also copy the Info.xml file that’s contained within _combined. So the only things I can’t copy are the art and posters directories inside of _combined.

How important is that _combined folder? To me it just looks like a combination of the files from the other folders just renamed, which makes sense since it’s called “combined”.

So, to be clear, I’m successfully able to copy:

Contents/com.plexapp.agents.imdb/art/47d836cc2c005f80327d948351be0f9e28740cbe

But unable to copy:

Contents/_combined/art/com.plexapp.agents.imdb_47d836cc2c005f80327d948351be0f9e28740cbe

Both of which appear to be completely identical other than the filenames.

So three ideas:

  1. Can the files in the _combined folders be skipped assuming that either they’re unnecessary or that Plex will recreate them itself?
  2. Can I just chown or 777 them?
  3. Would a little batch script that just replicated and renamed the missing files and then dropped them into a newly created _combined folder work?
3

What you’re doing is really the hard way.

The pathnames are going to be all different and completely incompatible because of / vs \. Your metadata, in most cases, will not line up. You’ll end up with a mess.

The official way is here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/

The key part here is the MachineID and ProcessedMachineID
along with your watched/viewstate https://support.plex.tv/articles/201154527-move-viewstate-ratings-from-one-install-to-another/

Let windows create the new DB & metadata as it wants… Then add the viewstate.
Edit your MachineID & ProcessedMachineID in the registry and now one will assume the identity of the other

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Thanks for the reply @ChuckPA.

I’m following that guide. All it says is literally copy these files from here

/Volume1/Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/

And put them into here:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server

Seems simple, but they don’t all copy. So what am I doing wrong?

That’s the first I’ve heard of anything called MachineID or ProcessedMachineID, which isn’t in that guide either, but appreciate the link and thanks for that information.

Edit: I don’t see anything on either of the links about MachineID/ProcessedMachineID. When you say one will assume the identity of the other, I’m unclear on what that means, or what information to put into each. The only support article that even mentions MachineID is about interpreting XML data:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/?s=machineid&search=support_articles

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There are a bunch of things missing from the guide. It’s getting a huge overhaul. It just moved over to the new support system a few weeks ago, Now we can start adding the missing content.

Please understand. Linux pathnames and Windows pathnames are incompatible. Everything in the database that points to your media will be invalid.

There is no C:\ on Linux. “Drive letters” is entirely a Windows construct.
This means having your media on M:\ means nothing to linux. It will look for a directory named M: in the current directory and FAIL.

If you want to manually edit the DB, you’re welcome to. There are those who’ve demonstrated how to do it.
Be advised, we can’t support that use case.

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I understand that the paths won’t match of course, but are you then saying that there’s no way to migrate the metadata from a Linux system to a Windows system or visa versa?

Maybe since that guide isn’t applicable for a Linux -> Windows migration you could just give me a quick basic step-by-step of what’s I should be doing that’s actually possible.

  • Which folders, if any, should I copy into APPDATA?
  • Is there any point in migrating the database like you linked to if the paths aren’t going to line up? If not, how do I migrate the view state?
  • Is there any way to migrate all of the posters, fixed matches, split duplicates, and manually corrected info?
  • Can you explain the steps I need to do in the registry in regards to MachineID/ProcessedMachineID?

Any direction on where to go with all of this would be appreciated. Thanks @ChuckPA!

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if you really want all the data.

As user admin , Right-click on Plex Media Server under Application Support on the Syno and Compress to Plex Media Server.zip
take that to windows.

Unzip on top of the current install (or move the PMS directory out of the way) in C:\Users\your-name\AppData\Local\ resulting in \AppData\Local\Plex Media Server directory.

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@ChuckPA said:
if you really want all the data.

As user admin , Right-click on Plex Media Server under Application Support on the Syno and Compress to Plex Media Server.zip
take that to windows.

Unzip on top of the current install (or move the PMS directory out of the way) in C:\Users\your-name\AppData\Local\ resulting in \AppData\Local\Plex Media Server directory.

Thanks! But this is going to fail though because of the path problem, right? :slight_smile:

And also, as mentioned previously, you can’t zip the folder because of the name not matched errors.
Scratch that, apparently if you do it via DSM instead of the command line then either there are no errors, or they’re just not visible.

Maybe the easiest plan is just to run PMS on Windows 10 in a Docker and bypass the the path problem all together.

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All right new plan. I’ll just admit defeat and accept the fact that to do this Windows migration I’ll have to go through and re-choose and re-create thousands of posters, and fix all of the dozens of bad auto-matches, etc, etc. In fact, I probably could have done it by now having spent two days on this already :stuck_out_tongue:

The one thing that seems the most critical is how do I just migrate the watched/unwatched data for all of my users from the Synology to Windows?

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Interesting you say you can’t unzip. I find I can unzip either on either, without issue.

The steps I gave you are specifically “Directory-relative” and do not concern drive letters.
You will have to disable “Empty trash after every library scan” (per the procedure) before making the ZIP. This will allow you to fix the pathnames and retain the custom posters. All PMS needs is to retain the old entry long enough to match it again to its new path (location)

If you prefer, Linux native is a tar archive and several Windows tools understand this file format. They will process paths and create subdirectories appropriately

11

regarding Fixing your rematches, Perhaps it would help if you had your names processed through a renaming tool (FileBot or TheRenamer) ?? Best $5 / $10 you’ll spend. After done matching, the names are perfect and match the same internet databases Plex uses.

If you use them, you’ll never have Plex match incorrectly again.

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@ChuckPA said:
Interesting you say you can’t unzip. I find I can unzip either on either, without issue.

FWIW, this was my command:

admin@Synology:/volume1/Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases$ zip -r pms-backup.zip Plex\ Media\ Server/

Followed by thousands of these errors:

zip warning: name not matched: Plex Media Server/Metadata/TV Shows/1/939debb369896b22b8dab26a0b7d8f442a0c943.bundle/Contents/_combined/seasons/1/episodes/4/thumbs/com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb_e85c0305b5ecd3b969cc5225fddcb1873a847ac9

regarding Fixing your rematches (snip)

Fortunately, TV has never been a problem. Most of my badly matched files were due to foreign film titles, Plex’s Movie Database not having the title period so having to switch to TMDB or enter the IMDb ID manually, or things like stand-up comedy, none of which Filebot can fix.

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@ChuckPA said:
The steps I gave you are specifically “Directory-relative” and do not concern drive letters.
You will have to disable “Empty trash after every library scan” (per the procedure) before making the ZIP. This will allow you to fix the pathnames and retain the custom posters. All PMS needs is to retain the old entry long enough to match it again to its new path (location)

Okay, great, thanks!

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The zip error you show from the command line. That why we use tar or the Synology ZIP utility. It gets it right with no fuss

I will show you the tar command which 7-zip or other tool can read on windows.
The output will be placed at the top of the Plex share.

sudo -su root
cd "/volume1/Plex/Library/Application Support"
tar cf /volume1/Plex/TransferToWindows.tar   "./Plex Media Server"

Notice this was done as root.
When you take it to Windows, all sense of permissions will be discarded. No permission errors and no zip errors

1 Like
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@ChuckPA said:
The zip error you show from the command line. That why we use tar or the Synology ZIP utility. It gets it right with no fuss

Well, it took just shy of forever, but you’re right, no errors and it looks completely clean. Learn something new every day, thanks so much!

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Just migrated server from a Synology NAS to an ACER Predator laptop to amp up the speed. I have followed the instructions and all extracted fine, it seems, but all the old artwork/posters etc remain. Is there a trick to this (I unzipped on top of the current install). Is it worth a shot at moving the PMS folder on the laptop and re unzipping. I am presuming this should all be done while signed out of PMS. Thanks

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