Unfortunately, after copying the files from the NAS to the correct location on the Windows machine, my old libraries aren’t showing, and on initial start of the server and opening the webpage it configured itself as a new plex server.
Any thoughts on what might have gone wrong and how to fix the problem? Or is there just a general incompatibility in moving from NAS to PC?
Those instructions are only applicable when moving to a different machine of the same architecture/operating system.
QNAP NAS’s and windows computers are fundamentally different, so that these instructions don’t work.
That begins with the format of the server settings, which on Linux go into a file, but on Windows are stored in the registry database.
The reference to file storage locations is also different between both OS’s, so that all references to media files in the database are invalid.
My personal tip: erase the plex data on the windows server completely.
Then set up a plex server with a small test library and test if it is working.
After that, shut down the server and copy only the main database file from the Qnap data folder to the Windows data folder.
This will transfer the number and type of your libraries and your ‘watched’ history over.
However, you must edit each of these libraries and change the references to the media folder. This will then trigger a complete update of those libraries. Custom seleted posters etc will very likely get reset.
If you have a lot of manually edited metadata in your library, you probably want to directly change all file references in the database from Unix style to Windows style.
e.g. from /mnt/raid1/movie/Avatar (2009)... to F:\movie\Avatar (2009)...
But this is not for the faint-hearted: [HowTo] Plex database modification - Moving media the right/wrong way
