I had a motherboard failure on my old server, my server died without a proper backup but I was able to grab the original Plex Media Server folder from the Local App Data on the hard drive following the guide on the support site. Then I followed the guide on how to restore the data from the backup on the new server (Move an Install to Another System), except now the server is reported as being Currently Unavailable. I can see the names of the libraries I created for my server in the left sidebar, but I am unable to edit the libraries or view any of my media. I was not able to salvage the additional settings from the drive, but I was under the assumption that didn’t matter much.
My storage is currently set up the exact same way as it was before the hardware failure and the locations of my files haven’t changed, not that I’m sure that matters since it reports the entire server as being offline not just the files/storage.
I’m not sure where to go from here. Anybody know what the issue could be or what I might have done wrong?
What do you mean by that?
The data from the registry?
If yes, you will have to claim the server again.
How did you restore the data from the old Plex data folder?
Did you put it into the C:\Users\<name> folder of your current Windows user account? Or a different location?
Using the “Setup Plex.html” file opens the server and it says it’s initializing, it takes a long time before eventually saying an error occurred and to make sure the server is available.
Disabling the local security with the registry did nothing and it still says the server is unavailable.
If the old server was suddenly shut down, chances are high that the primary database file is damaged.
I’d try:
installing the same server version which was running on the defective installation (the old Plex Media Server.log file in the plex data folder should tell you eactly which version that was.) You should find recent installer exe’s in the subfolder Updates of the plex data folder.
The version listed was the same as what I’m currently running, but I still reinstalled using the latest server version stored in the Updates folder just in case.
I tried each copy of the backups going all the way back to April 20th, nothing changed.
I feel incredibly dumb. For some reason the server was duplicated, one version didn’t work but another that didn’t have the correct name and had none of the libraries pinned seems to be running perfectly. Not sure how things ended up like this, but here we are.
Thank you for all the help with this, I was pulling my hair out in frustration, but it turned out to be something so simple.
You didn’t copy the registry data. That’s where the server’s identity and name is stored.
So you got basically a new server, with a default name.
You will probably have to do the same thing on all your Plex clients.
And all your shared users probably as well.
