Hi there. I managed to get my boot-sector corrupted on my Windows boot-drive, where Plex is installed. But, luckily I am able to read the entire file-contents of the drive fine when I insert it into another computer. So I have a complete copy of the existing drive.
So I have now inserted a new drive for booting windows on my server and tried to install Plex server latest. However copying the old AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\ files into the new install did not work as intended. Could I get some help/guide in how to restore this?
the problem seems to be that it thinks that its a new install and not the same server as I had before. I have reinstalled and called my server Garage, but it seems like the old Garage server is still not the same as the new install…
I think the PMS instance is defined in the registry, not in the application files (under appdata). So unless you have a backup of the registry, restoring the original instance may get tricky. I think there is a way to get rid of the old instance (you do not really need it because what you should care most is your libraries), e.g. How do you remove an old Plex Media Server instance?, but do a search for deleting old PMS instances in case there is more up=to-date info.
I am not an expert here, but it may be a moot point, since instances may be registered with plex.tv. I would just keep the new instance and get rid of the old one. But again, not an expert.
Importing the old registry values (while Plex server is shut down!) will indeed restore the old server links in the apps,
as well as restoring any media shares.
Make sure your new server installation does also have the same local IP address. Otherwise you’ll still have to rebuild your sidebars and homepages.
For information, I mounted the c:\users\username\ntuser.dat registry hive from the old disk by using this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuSxbDIlFW0 and then I exported the data to a .reg file and edited the file with notepad so it pointed to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Plex, Inc.\Plex Media Server] in registry. Then it was imported to my newly installed disk and now the correct “Garage” server is now back on-line and working well. Thanks again!
May I ask why this is not backed up by the included back-up function?
Because the default Plex backup only backs up the database (in case it gets corrupted). It is not intended as a backup/restore solution of Plex instances.
