sounds like your average “new machine migration” but it’s not!
If I have moved the metadata folder to a different drive do I just reinstall windows and then install pms and then update the registry to point to the correct metadata location?
I moved the metadata folder to a different drive becuase my database was getting a bit to large for the default install location.
It should work. Make sure that the entire folder is moved, not just metadata.
at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server. This folder contains the server’s database, metadata, artwork, and other important files.
I don’t have the “PMS” folder in localappdata because I moved it to another drive and then edited the regedit to pont to that drive.
There are no guides on moving plex to another system when the folder has been moved to another drive entirely and I don’t want to lose years of watch data and database scrapes.
The only difference is the location of the Plex data folder.
Make sure to perform a direct copy of the data folder (old custom location → new custom location).
Do not zip the folder for transferring it.
Be sure the target drive is not a drive pool and is formatted with the NTFS file system.
I use robocopy /MIR on the command line for this. It has the advantage that it copies the file and folder date/time stamps. You can always abort the process and later resume it with the same command line. It will simply compare source and target and only actually copy items which are not already present on the target.
So, I decided to go for broke.
New windows installed and reinstalled plex. did not run after install. then updated regedit with backup and launched plex server. still had to add libraries back in but that only takes a few minutes.
plex is scraping the data back in, but the metadata and watched info is all there still.
That’s a win in my books!
Did you edit the registry to point Plex to the new location of the Plex data folder? i.e. the location where your backup is located?
This can be done either by directly opening the .reg file with notepad.exe, or after importing it in regedit.
If the folder was copied from a crashed instance of Plex server, or was copied while the old server was still running, your primary database is probably damaged.
To solve this, you will need to shutdown both old and new server instances, then copy over the database folder again.
If the old server was not running, but was not shut down cleanly, you want to try and restore an older backup of the database https://support.plex.tv/articles/202485658-restore-a-database-backed-up-via-scheduled-tasks/
no, let me try to explain this a different way…
I needed to reinstall windows on my plex machine. I already had plex metadata folder moved from the default directory (c:\ →o:\). I then had updated the registry to point to o:\
next was the windows reinstall. I didn’t want to mess up my plex metadata and watched history because we are talking like 15 years of data here…
I backed up the regedit to a flash drive. reinstalled windows, reinstalled plex, then put the registry file back in place. I have only had to add the libraries back in to the fresh plex install and plex is adding the content back in as I type, but the metadata and watch history has been saved and is updating accordingly.
So, essentially I have “moved to a new machine”!
Did reinstalling Windows perhaps change or swap the drive letters of some media drive(s)? This could explain the need for a rescan. Otherwise, if nothing changed about the media file storage, Plex wouldn’t even notice that something is different now.
Something doesn’t sound right. The watched history is in the same database that holds the library information. So if you had to recreate the library, then it’s not seeing the database correctly.
Do you have the option enabled to sync your watched history to your Plex account. If you did the history was saves to plex and now being transferred back to your new server, so it’s basically a new server and your transfer didn’t work as you thought.
yeah, suddenly it’s not working this morning. I thought I followed the guide, it’s easy enough…
now the rest of my family doesn’t have access and my library isn’t showing up on my phone at all.
the movies show up in the webdash but nothing else does
