Recreating plex libraries after storage space problems

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#1.21.2.3943:
Player Version#

I have a rather large Movies library in Plex. It is contained on a Windows storage space that is made up of now ten 10tb hard drives. Well, during a recent hard drive upgrade to the storage space two of the 8tb hard drives were replaced with 10tb drives. Well I set the two 8tb drives for removal in storage space management. But, after the drives were removed and replaced the storage space had errors because the two 8tb drives were still in the storage space according to
the management screen. Well I tried several commands under powershell to remove the 8tb drives and repair the storage space, but, that did not work… So, the only method that I could come up with to fix the problem is to backup the movies on a NAS device then delete and recreate the storage space. Then, load the movies back onto the newly created storage space.

Now, here are the questions. First is there any other way of fixing the storage space problems? If not, can the movie library be brought back in such a way as to not have to redo all the metadata and library information? If so, how.? Realize that the movie library itself is 17tb and it takes several days just to back it up. Then, several more days to restore it. I would like to avoid all the metadata lookup if possible.

Thank you for all your help,
John Turi

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  1. Shut down Plex server before doing any changes on the media storage.
  2. Afterwards, make sure that all media are accessible under the exact same drive letter/folder name / filename as they were before.

If the damage is already done, try reverting to an earlier snapshot of the main database file: https://support.plex.tv/articles/202485658-restore-a-database-backed-up-via-scheduled-tasks/

3

Thank you OttoKerner.