Want to move Plex Server Mac to Windows

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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I have been running Plex on my Mac Mini for years and it has been wonderful. I have my media on my NAS drive and everything has worked great up until recently.

I share my Plex Library with family and friends so I have quite a few shared users with a typical evening seeing 5-6 people online. Most recently (holiday dinners) I have heard folks mention they are seeing some buffering happening.

Now I have a 300/300 FIOS connection, so bandwidth isnt really the issue. I am thinking it is the ole Mac Mini just cant keep up anymore.

So I would like to move my Plex server to my Windows 10 PC which has the ThreadRipper 2950X in it. Any advice? I have read the articles and how-tos, but would love to hear from someone that has done it. My major concern is if my shared users will transfer over and still have access. There is no way I want to walk some of my family members through signing up again.

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There is little chance to bring over all metadata.
However, you could transfer over your ‘played’ statistics.

  1. shut down Plex server on the mac
  2. copy the main Plex database file to a safe location https://support.plex.tv/articles/202485658-restore-a-database-backed-up-via-scheduled-tasks/
  3. set up Plex server on the windows box. Use the same Plex credentials you are using now on the Mac. Create a small test library to test principal functionality.
  4. disable automatic and periodic library updates on Windows https://support.plex.tv/articles/200289526-library/
  5. Shut down Plex server on Windows
  6. copy the database file you saved earlier over to the Windows box, replacing the one that is already existing there.
  7. Start Plex server on the Windows box.
  8. Edit your library(s) to include the new paths to your media files. Windows and Mac have different approaches to describing the location of files, so this has to be changed.
  9. Scan Library FIles for each library (this may take a long time)

If you have experience with both Mac and Windows and are not shy of the command line interface, you could edit your database file directly, to change all Mac-style file paths to Windows-style file paths.
This will be of benefit particularly to media, which are not matched or which had manual edits to their metadata.
see [HowTo] Plex database modification - Moving media the right/wrong way

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Finally got around to doing this and everything worked perfectly.
My main concern about shared users was a non-issue. they came over no problem. Copying the database brought over most everything else. Library scan, refresh meta data and on my way.

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