Restoring Plex server backup after hd crash.

General Discussions
1

The hard drive on my Plex server is dying. When I replace it and restore the backup that Plex does every 3 days. Will it remember all the covers and backgrounds I changed (from the agents) and change them back when i refresh the library or will everything revert to default?

I’ve tried to clone my plex server folder from ubuntu but many files just can’t be copied on my nas with all this rights management hell.

Thanks for your time.

2

No, the database file only contains ‘textual’ metadata. No pictures whatsoever. And no automatically downloaded subtitles either.
For all metadata you need to backup pretty much the whole Plex data folder.

You can only safely copy all the files while Plex server is not running.
You should use tar or similar. Copying all the files individually will take much longer.

3

To augment:

if Linux, use:

cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver
sudo tar cf /some/place/to/save/plex/to.tar ./Library

When you replace the drive, after installing Plex, starting it and then stopping:

 cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver
 sudo mv Library Library-not-needed
 tar xf /some/place/where/plex/was/saved.tar
 chown -R plex:plex ./Library
 rm -rf Library-not-needed
4

Thanks guys this is great. Doing this right now, before it dies!