On the same machine or on a different machine?
Different machine:
- Attach an external hard drive, formatted with the NTFS(!) file system
- shut down plex server with its tray icon
- export the registry branch of Plex and save the exported file on the external hard drive
- copy the Plex data folder in its entirety to the external hard drive
- Install Plex server on the new machine and test it with a few files, just to make sure it is running
- attach the external hard drive to the new machine
- stop/quit/exit plex server on the new machine, in case it is running
- copy the contents of the old Plex data folder to the default location on the new machine, thereby overwriting those which were created there from the test run
- import the backed up registry settings
- Make sure that all media file locations use the same drive letters and folder names as they did on the old machine
- start plex server on the new machine
- never run plex server on the old and the new machine simultaneously!
optional: in step 8 you can opt to use a different location for the new Plex data folder.
This can be a separate hard drive or SSD drive.
It must not be a network share and it has to be formatted with the NTFS file system.
Then follow this procedure from step 4 on: Moving Metadata on Windows
The benefit of this is that you will find your metadata folder more easily. If you use a dedicated hard drive for it, it will be very easy to migrate to the next machine in the future or save the plex data in case of a re-installation of the OS.
