I’ve just purchaed a WD EX2 device (I’m new to NAS devices). I have a Plex server installed on my Macbook, primarily for a very large music library. I understand that it will be relatively straightforward to install a new Plex server on the NAS drive, and run Plex from there, which will be more convenient. What I’m not sure about - and forgive me if this is a stupid question - is what I should do with the old, original Plex server. Will it be automatically replaced (it will be on the same network, obviously) or does it have to be manually uninstalled? Thanks for your help!
Firstly, be aware of certain downgrades that could occur with hosting a Plex server on a WD NAS moving from a PC, especially for a large server.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201373823-nas-devices-and-limitations/
Secondly, if you’re so technically inclined, you can actually transfer the installation from PC to NAS, wouldn’t recommend it though as someone who used WD server for a while.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/
Third, if you do decide to move the installation, you can simply log out of old server before you uninstall and remove any remnants of if from.
Thank you - that’s very helpful. After reading your first link, I’ll probably leave the Plex server on the Macbook after all. All (!) I need to do now is make sure I can point the server to the correct music file on the NAS drive. Thanks again…
I just got a WD My Cloud EX2 and noted that you can run a plex server on it. I see some articles about moving plex servers, but I have a couple of high-level questions.
If I copy the content over to the NAS to the NAS, of course there’s no “drive letter” … path to library is going to be different. I assume I tell it in the new install where my media is… but … I’ve customized posters for collections and even some individual videos, and of course I have thoughtfully organized stuff into collections.
I’m not sure how Plex does all that under the covers. I’ve assumed there is some library database it keeps somewhere that one would have to move to have any hope of retaining that data, and then some way to tell it where the files are now that the data applies to.
Like, on my Windows box it might be in E:\My Movies\Documentaries and then on the NAS that content might be in \Movies\Documentaries or \My Movies\Documentaries, if it makes it easier.
Or … am I going to have to do that work all over again? Or … should I just keep using my Windows box to run Plex and have it grab content off the NAS instead of a local hard drive? Am I going to run into similar problems with my customizations even if I do that?
Of course, I guess there would always be the option of mounting the NAS as E:\ on the windows server, but I’m interested in how it handles metadata for the library wrt to the location of the media.
I did find the folder where the metadata is stored. I’m just wondering if I change the location of the media files for an existing library, if the metadata (assuming I can find the right place to put it on the NAS) would still map to the media correctly.
I would suggest you do a deep dive into the support article
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/
Some of your questions are addressed there. metadata is not stored in the same location as media, those are 2 seperate locations, again refer to the article for clarification. if the ultimate goal is to retain the metadata i.e. customised posters, tagging, collections etc, the important thing is the moving the actual install which can get challening on the WD as you will need to SSH into the drive inorder to access the PMS locations, which can potentially void the warranty if done incorrectly . If I remeber correctly you will also have to deal with how path configurations differ between Windows and Linux as well as Linux folder permissions. I once used a server on a WDMYCLOUD which I moved successfully from a PC. It wasnt worth the hassle, not forgetting to mention the PC PMS functionality that will be sacrified. I would just mount the new drive, change location of media, disable emptying trash, rescan media, check to see if metadata was maintained and re-enable trash once done.
Yeah, I think I’m going to stick with the Windows server and just use the NAS as the storage but I’ll still need to make sure my metadata maps to the content new storage location. Going to have to do some reading. No big rush right now, I’m just changing the way I do files and backup here throughout the whole house.
It’s working! I did a test library first, and when it worked the way it said it would, I did the rest. It’s still scanning and updating the library, but it’s keeping my custom metatdata (I have lots of music files so … yeah, it’ll be a couple of hours anway.)
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