Hi,
Getting issues with 4k content on my 9 year old Lenovo x201. I have just ordered an Acer with 10th gen i5 processor and 12gb RAM.
I have ready the 2014 post on moving content, but wondered if there was a simpler ‘Lite’ version. I only have movies , across two 3 TB hard drives, no playlists or anything.
Is there a simple process for moving from laptop to laptop (WIn 7 to Win 10) ? Would be ideal to keep the ‘recently added’ and ‘unwatched’ info, bit not a deal breaker if it makes the move super simple. THX !
Thanks, I read through it and have a few questions, hopefully you can help:
I have done the steps up to finding the plex media server in appdata folder. It has 7GB of info, does that sound right? I am moving two hard drives (D and H drive) that have about 2.5 TB of movies.
So just to understand, do I copy that entire folder ?
The next steps talk about copying windows registry key , what is that for , and how do you do that? I saw no instructions for it.
Once I have set up the new laptop with the Plex app, do I just copy the plex media folder over to the new PC ? If so, where to I put it , as the drive layout will not be the same as old laptop. Do I just create a folder, say c/windows OR program files / local/ appdata and paste the folder into there? If so, will the new plex app know where to look, or do I need to somehow point it there?
Once I have done that, and I plug in the two hard drives that hold the movies , will the new laptop still see it as drive D and H ? If not do I need to rename them to that, as all my movies are stored in plex library as D OR H/movies/ movie name (year) folder/ movie name (year) file?
Will the new library already see them after doing a scan? Or do I need to do anything manually to the library?
How do I paste the registry key data into new laptop , from the copy ?
The registry is kind of a database where Windows stores certain configuration parameters for the OS as well as for applications.
Your Windows has an app called RegEdit or Registry Editor.
If you cannot find it in your start menu, right click the Windows button and click on Run. Then enter regedit and click OK.
The support article references certain keys – consider those to be like a “folder path”. On the left side of the RegEdit app is a navigation where you can drill down to the record you’re looking for (I believe there’s also a search).
The appdata folder should be in the same place. In order to avoid too big of a mess, best name your user account similar to how you named it on the old computer. You cannot just move it around (at least not with a significant impact on the additional steps).
If Windows won’t recognize them as the same drive letters… you can change them.
To avoid trouble… make sure they map to the exact same drive letters as before!
If you follow the steps you should be good.
The RegEdit app discussed above has an option to export and import the parameters related to a certain key (use the key given in the support article).
I have a question regarding the ‘user’ folder. My old laptop that has hosted plex for last 6 years, has the location: computer/local disk (c:) / users/ mgiXXXXXX/appdata/local/ plex media server
However my new laptop has : this PC/ Acer (c:)/ users/ marcu/ and then in “marcu” there is no appdata or local etc.
I managed to rename ‘this pc’ to ‘computer’ and ‘Acer (c:)’ to local disk (c:), but right click does not allow me to change ‘user’ from ‘marcu’ to mgibXXXXXX’. Looked on web, seems like a VERY complicated process - changing numerous registries.
How can I work around this? I mean, does the old laptop specifically point to the above file path, or does it just see the PMS folder? If it is a specific path, how do I tell plex on my new PC where to point ? thx
Ok, change of plan. I just did a factory reset instead (seeing as I had only downloaded a few things like chrome and pms etc). I skipped using the whole microsoft account login process , so I now have the correct file path based on the user I used, not the one the pc created last time. thx
