Move to new drive without showing content as recently added

General Discussions
1

Hi,
I have some content on a smaller TB drive and I would like to move all this content to a new larger drive without listing it all as recently added. Is there a way to do this and if so how ?
Move around 400 files to a new drive and have them show up just as they do now, older dates not under recently added. this really would mess everything up.
thanks

2

I have tried so many ways to do this, lolā€¦ I even copied over, rescanned so it picked up the doubles, and then deleted from the old drive, rescanned to remove the doubles, and it still listed them as recently added after the doubles were removed, lolā€¦ If anyone knows how to do this, it would be super helpful :slight_smile:

3

OS isnā€™t mentioned but I have done this several times without issue in Windows.
The key element is ā€œShut down Plex before doing anything.ā€

Then move/copy the data ensuring the folder structure is the same.
Once the data is copied in Admin tools change the drive letter of the source drive to anything else.
Change the new drives letter to what it previously was.(This is why i prefer network paths.)

After a reboot Plex would have no idea anything changed.

4

Maybe this:

  • In your library, add path to both new and old path
  • Move media
  • Scan Library Files
  • Empty Trash
1 Like
5

only empty trash after verifying all content is properly detected.

:wink:

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6

Sorry, my Plex server runs on the Mac mini (Mojave)

7

Also, I was not clear enough what I would love to accomplish.
The thing I really want to do is to move data from my second hard drive on the Mac mini to an external drive. my internal drive is called ā€œMedia 2TBā€ and the folder ā€œContentā€.
I am wondering if I can just do the following:

  1. shutdown Plex
  2. copy content from Media 2TB to an external drive (for now call it WD)
  3. Delete ā€œcontentā€ from Media 2TB
  4. rename Media 2TB to something else
  5. rename ā€œwdā€ to Media 2TB
  6. restart plex

I donā€™t really want to try this unless I have a pretty good idea that it will work. Otherwise it would be easier to just move the content and deal with the fact that they will all be marked as recently added.
But if there is any way around this, I really want to know because it is super annoying to have old content in the list is recently added.

the reason why I want to do this is that my external drive (WD) is a NAS with more than 16 TB of usable space so once I make this change I should be good for a while.

thanks

8

Iā€™m running a Mac mini on Mojave. After years of having this problem Iā€™ve finally sussed it:

In your Library add the folder path to the new source (donā€™t delete the current one)

Then go to:

Settings > Library

Then uncheck:

  • Scan my library automatically
  • Run a partial scan when changes are detected
  • Scan my library periodically
  • Empty trash automatically after every scan

Donā€™t forget to save the changes at the bottom of the screen

Then:

  • Copy all of your content to the new location
  • Manually Scan Library Files (I do this a few times to be on the safe side)

Everything youā€™ve moved should now appear like there is a duplicate copy

Now Empty Trash

That should do it. I recently moved a few 1000 files and only had 1 flag as Recently Added, which was due to it being incorrectly matched originally.

Try it with a few test cases first. If you get stuck feel free to drop me a PMā€¦ :slight_smile:

Donā€™t forget to go back into Settings > Library at the end and re-check everything (and save)

p.s. I can do this without having to close down the serverā€¦

1 Like
9

Nice post, but sadly you forgot what I did as wellā€¦

And that is after verifying, to remove the old path from the library :wink:

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10

Ha! thanks :wink:

Just updated to Export Tools v2 btw - thanks for the ongoing support. Best plugin ever!

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11

Easily done for TV Shows.
Impossible for movies.

My Recently Added for Movies is only useful if library maintenance hasnā€™t been done for a while. After maintenance itā€™s just a list of what was moved and had Preview Thumbs regenerated for.

12

Well, Iā€™m currently working on TV Shows, how can I do it without causing them to move to Recently Added? Iā€™d be very interested to know the secret sauce

13

You already have been told several times!

Followed by:

Followed by:

14

Any of the advertised methods seem to work fine for TV Shows. Nothing Iā€™ve tried does the same for movies.

15

Ahh, I misunderstood your initial replyā€¦ I thought you meant the method I used works for TV shows, lolā€¦ I thought maybe one of my steps might be out of order or something.

@dane22 I knew those worked, I am just not really interested in changing drive letters and pathsā€¦ I thought juice had a different way similar to what I was doingā€¦ :wink:

16

Only way, unless you wanna edit the database directly (not recommended) and outcome the same

17

One of the caveats is the matching agent must be used to ā€˜re-matchā€™ā€¦ i.e. changing agents midstream will blow the operation. My TV Agent has always been TVDB, but my Movie Agent has always been TMDB - so, thatā€™s all I can tell you.

1 Like
18

Ok, I succeeded to move all movies from my second drive to an external one and once I started plex they were all there, no re-scanning, no listing them all as recently added. YES !!!
Here is what i did (might be wrong but it worked):

  1. shut down plex
  2. used rsync (this is a mac setup) rsync -av /Volume/drive1/Media /Volume/Drive2/
  3. After the rsync was done I renamed my external drive to the same as the second drive was before and I renamed the second drive to something else.
  4. restarted plexā€¦voila all worked
1 Like
19

Pretty much what I suggested in post #3 albeit a different OS
Glad it worked. :grinning:

20

Iā€™m wondering if Iā€™ve been syncing wrong. In my library settings, I do not have one folder pathā€¦I have many folders, therefore many paths. In other words, Iā€™ve broken down my movies into categories, (Folders on my computer) Such as: Drama, Adventure, Comedy, etc. TV series the same way ( a folder for each series), Then I add each folder. Thus many folders.

That said, if I want to move all of the folders to another drive, and delete the drive that is currently there. Do I have to add each folder pathā€¦in other wordsā€¦duplicate each folder path so that, there will be a Drama folder from old drive, and Drama folder new drive, and so on?

If so, then Iā€™m ok with that, but Iā€™m confused at this point.

If there is an easier way, then Iā€™m certainly open to that!

Thanks!