I have an old 32bit Server running on Ancient hardware. I have just installed the new 64bit server on some new hardware. My Plex Server metadata and media folders are around 70GB. I have put 1000’s of hours into curating my collection, is there a way to keep the metadata from the old server and put it onto the new server somehow. I have seen a number of videos describing just copying the data from one system to the other but I am also changing architectures (32bit - 64bit). Is there a guide on how to do this and/or can anyone provide any assistance?
All of my media is on my NAS so pathing will be identical between the two machines.
Just copy the plex data folder from old to new machine.
I recommend robocopy /MIR to do that.
Make double sure that neither the source, nor the target Plex server are actually running while the copy is in progress.
Make sure to reset the access permissions of the plex data folder on the new machine, so the Windows user account under which Plex server is going to be running has full permissions to it.
I’d also recommend to swap the local IP adresses of the old and the new server before starting it for the first time. (make sure to adapt the DHCP reservation settings in your router if you use them)
After you have started Plex server on the new machine, you must never start it on the old one again!
(If you want to continue using the old server, you will have to make changes to the configuration of one of the servers. Which will cause it to lose its “identity”, so you will have to set up media sharing again.)
So I had already created a new server on the new Plex Server. How do i delete the old data as i replaced all of the PMS Data and it is still showing as my old server. Is there something else that needs to be cleared?
OK, i just read this and its bloody confusing. So here goes.
New Plex Server == Joshflix 2.0
Old Plex Server == Joshflix
New Computer Name == NEW_PC
Old Computer Name == LOUNGE_PC
So I installed a fresh instance of Plex on NEW_PC, named it JoshFlix 2.0. I then posted this forum post. I then uninstalled everything on NEW_PC and started again. I installed everything into the default locations. I then deleted all contents out of the PM Data folder and then copied the LOUNGE_PC data into the PMS Data folder and started the server. The NEW_PC plex instance is still showing as Joshflix 2.0. What am i missing?
I am not sure what you mean here.
If you did it as I’ve explained it above, you should see no change in any of your clients. The new machine will take the place of the old machine with no apparent difference.
I hope you have named the test installation on the new machine with a distinct “friendly name”? Just to make it easier to distinguish the two instances.
If you have named them the same, change the friendly name of the copied server to something different. then stop and restart it.
After some time (how long, may be vastly different), you should be able to distinguish the two server instances on https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/settings/devices/pms by their names. You can then delete the instance of the test installation.
