One of my hard drives is going to break down any day now, and i have around 6TB of movies there sorted after “date added” in the plex library (that are stored on the hard drive. I have total of 11TB movies on other hard drives).
How can i keep the “date added” library when i transfer the movies to the new hard drive? All the 6TB will be added as “new” when plex finds out ive removed them and then added then on the new hard drive. The last thing i want is to get the old movies at the top of the page on “date added” section.
If you’re on Windows:
shut down Plex Server
copy the content to the new hard drive, make sure to keep all folder names as they were on the old drive
take a note of the current drive letter of the defective drive
remove the drive
put the new drive into its place
assign the new drive the same drive letter which the defective one had: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-change-a-drive-letter-2626069
start Plex server
done
The steps from @flow below work perfectly. PMS keeps the same GUID (matching information) and shows the duplicate 2 indicator. This is what preserves your watched status
flow said:
Copy files to new hdd
add that new folder to Plex library and initiate a scan
if the movies get a little “2” sign:
delete the old folder from Plex library and rescan (the 2 should vanish)
done.
I have used both methods described. Both worked perfectly. In both cases, I shut down the server during the copy process, possibly an unnecessary precaution. I also disabled “Run a partial scan when changes are detected” and “Empty trash automatically after every scan” before I shut down the server, again possibly unnecessary.
The method described by @OttoKerner is probably the better choice. Plex doesn’t even realize there is a new and different drive, and you skip the step of getting rid of the duplicates, as well as any fake “new Additions” because there are a couple of movies that used a different agent in the original matching process.
@flow said:
Copy files to new hdd
add that new folder to Plex library and initiate a scan
if the movies get a little “2” sign:
delete the old folder from Plex library and rescan (the 2 should vanish)
done.
To add to @flow method. Be sure you are using the same metadata agent before you add the new folder to PLEX. If the old movies are using the agent “The Movie Database” then be sure it’s still using that agent.
An example of what I’m talking about.
Avatar (2009) matched via The Movie Database is not the same as Avatar (2009) matched via Plex Movie.
If you can make the new location appear to be the old location, you don’t need to do it that way.
Plus, my method doesn’t fall over when there are items matched to different agents (which can happen easily with a library that’s already existed for some years).
