If the movies remain within the same library?
With “matched” movies, it is safe to achieve:
- ensure that the currently assigned metadata are current and use the selected metadata agent of the library. Trigger “Refresh Metadata” on this movie before doing anything else.
- Copy the movie file to your cold storage. Do NOT change the files in any way in the process.
- Scan Library Files. Plex should recognize the copied files as duplicates of the existing items. Verify this by clicking on the posters and inspecting the file names in the plex media info.
- delete the video files from the hot storage
- Scan Library Files
- Empty library Trash
With a cold storage on “spinning rust”, it might be necessary to disable “Empty trash automatically after every scan” in the server settings.
