I have a very simple setup. 3 drives with my media and NO tweaks at all. NO custom matches. NO custom meta data. Everything works. Everything is at default.
I now have upgraded to an 8TB drive on the same Win10x64 machine and want to move ALL my media to this drive. What is the simplest way to keep my stats…movies/episodes I have watched, date when I added a movie, etc?
What I have read is to COPY the media to the new drive and then add the location to Plex. This cant be the easiest method? That’s like 6 TB of data which will take hours to copy.
In that case, I don’t know what to say really.
Totally putting Plex to one side for now.
Moving data from hard drive to hard drive is pretty slow and it takes as long as it takes.
However, if you have enough sata/usb ports (not sure if your drives are internal or external) to have ALL the drives connected, then I would probably copy (not move) the files to the new drive.
Once copied you can then point Plex to the new drive and let it scan in everything. I would recommend letting Plex still see your existing drives.
This should then create duplicates for all your media. But it will retain watched status and everything else.
Once you’re happy that everything looks ok you should be able to disconnect the old drives.
From there emptying trash should remove the paths for the missing media but still retain watched status.
There are probably a few ways that you could do what you want, however it will always involve physically copying or moving all the media from the old drives to the new. That will take as long as it takes.
I am assuming that you are only swapping the hard drive with your media on it.
If you also have the plex data folder on the same hard drive, you better use a different methodology than the below.
If you want to replace an older media drive with a new, larger one simply do this:
connect the two drives simultaneously and copy the contents of the old to the new drive.
(robocopy.exe is your friend, because it allows you to pause the copy process and resume it later.)
Shut down Plex server
Note down the drive letter which the old drive had
remove the old drive, put the new drive in its place
assign the drive letter which the old drive previously had to the new drive
start Plex server – it will behave as if nothing has changed. No library scan necessary and metadata won’t change suddenly.
But in this case his data currently resides on 3 separate drives. So I assume 3 drive letters for his existing media.
Or at least that’s how I understand it.
I have one SSD where the Plex Server is installed. Separate from that I have 3 drives with my media (Movies/TV Shows/MP3s). I bought one big 8TB drive and that will be the new home for all my media.
I do know SQL quite well and might take a shot at that avenue.
What about copying all media to the new drive, adding the media to Plex so now there are 2 duplicates of all files, letting Plex cycle through all of it, then deleting all old media? Will that keep all my stats (watched, just added, etc)?
I’m not sure about just added. I think it will definitely keep watched status (assuming you keep all you library agents/scanners the same).
However it would be better to get confirmation off @OttoKerner.
It may be that editing the database is actually the most foolproof method. But way beyond my skill set.
Although this is the officially recommended way, it might not work under all circumstances.
Prime example would be a library which was created using one of the old agents, which hasn’t been converted to the new agents completely (or not converted at all) with some items matched using one agent and some using the another agent).
In this case, some of the moved items will be matched with a different agent and thus, will be treated as if they are new additions.
