Need to move my data files, but don't want to lose all metadata associated with it

[johnny_bravo]

Hello all,

For several reasons including performance, I will need to move my data files to another structure of disks system. My PLEX server installation is not moving as it stands on a SSD disk and is very fast. Just the movies, music and pictures used by my libraries will move location.

I took a look at https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/?_ga=2.243930561.53519528.1536613109-1572505391.1530731310, and want to confirm if i’m interpreting things correctly.

My understanding is that what i need to do is:

1. Keep current files where they are, and keep current libraries.
2. Copy data files to new locations (don’t delete original files as they are still being referenced by the libraries)
3. Add the new file locations to the correspondent libraries.
4. Let the system scan the new library locations - it is expected that these are matched to current library information, correct? Does this mean i’ll see the duplicate indicator that contents have been merged?
5. When library update process has finished (how can i really know about this?), edit the libraries and remove the old locations.
6. Do i need to force an update to the libraries again?
7. Should i run database optimization, clean bundles, and empty trash? In which order?

Thanks in advance,
Johnny Bravo

[OttoKerner]

The above procedure may work with items which are easily ‘match-able’ to an online metadata source.
If you however did a lot of manual matching and added lots of custom metadata or have un-matchable files (like documentaries, concert and music videos, sports etc pp)
you may have no other choice than to edit the database directly:

[HowTo] Plex database modification - Moving media the right/wrong way

[Moderator edit:] The description of the alternative method is given in the 10th post below: [HowTo] Plex database modification - Moving media the right/wrong way - #10 by jelwell People ask all the time about moving media content. I think the reason they ask is because I think this article is misleading: You can’t move content to a new location and expect any of your manual changes to apply to the moved content. If your files are all named perfectly, then sure, Plex will simply rematch you…

Side note: I doubt you will see significant improvement by moving the media files to an SSD.
Having the Plex data folder on a SSD will have a greater impact, IMO.

The organisation of your files on disk into folders and subfolders plays also very important role in the speed of Plex. Instead of moving it to an expensive SSD, you may gain speed improvements by reorganising it on your old ‘spinning rust’ drives.
See here for some details:

Why Plex always must reprocess the items?

This is a bit complex, but I’ll try anyway. As soon as you go to a movie’s PrePlay screen, Plex will take a look at the folder on disk where this movie is stored. It compares the ‘Date modified’ time stamp of the folder with the time in the Plex database, to see if the folder was changed since the last library update. The folder will have a newer time stamp whenever there was something changed in it. For instance, there could have been an external subtitle file or a local extra added to the f…

[johnny_bravo]

Hello OttoKerner,

Thanks for your comments. Just to clarify, i’m not moving my data to an expensive SSD. But i need to restructure how and where do I host my data.

My point of concern in some libraries i do have a lot of specific metadata that i had to add manually, so the challenge is to have the new location being associated with that metadata. Is this possible at all?
It would be great if PLEX would identify that the file is not found, and give the option to point it to the right (new) place…

thanks
Johnny

[OttoKerner]

@johnny_bravo

so the challenge is to have the new location being associated with that metadata. Is this possible at all?

My first link explains the only safe way to do that.