Way to read plex database for recovery?

General Discussions
1

I lost my drive with my movies and tv series on them. Before I start rebuilding the collection is there any way to READ the database that would tell me all the shows & movies I had? This would save me sending the drive out to a clean room to have it torn apart to try and get a directory listing at a HUGE cost. Plex keeps a full database…how can I see it and / or print it out??

Thanks,

Greg

2

If you can get ANY of the com.plexapp.library db files, SQLite3 will dump the contents out to a flat file (SQL format)

You didn’t state which OS you’re using. In Linux, echo .dump | sqlite3 filename.db > sql-text-output-filename
In there, you will find the path names to every fine PMS has cataloged

3

Your best chance for getting a nice list without going to the command line is to install the Plex Plugin ExportTools

4

@ChuckPA said:
If you can get ANY of the com.plexapp.library db files, SQLite3 will dump the contents out to a flat file (SQL format)

You didn’t state which OS you’re using. In Linux, echo .dump | sqlite3 filename.db > sql-text-output-filename
In there, you will find the path names to every fine PMS has cataloged

I’m using Windows 10. I do have all the plex files so I will try to do that. Thanks…

@OttoKerner said:
Your best chance for getting a nice list without going to the command line is to install the Plex Plugin ExportTools

Going to try that as well. I have to reinstall plex as I had a computer power issue that corrupted my C drive. That cord was replaced and luckily, my C drive is always backed up. So I have all the Plex files. But was worried that if I run plex now with nothing on the new media drive that it would essentially CLEAR the db. ??

Greg

5

Greg,
Starting up PMS, without your media present is the initial risk. Do you have your Library options set to empty the trash after each Library update?

6

@ChefGS said:
But was worried that if I run plex now with nothing on the new media drive that it would essentially CLEAR the db. ??

The first thing you should do is to disable two things:

  • disable ‘automatic library updates’
  • disable ‘Empty trash automatically after every scan’

both are to find under Settings - Server - Library

If you wanna make ultra-sure about that, you can set these two values in the Registry before starting up Plex:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Plex, Inc.\Plex Media Server]
"FSEventLibraryUpdatesEnabled"=dword:00000000
"autoEmptyTrash"=dword:00000000

I also attached the file for simple import by double-click. (zipped)

But even in the event if Plex should have been faster than you it is easy to revert: simply replace the Plex database file with the one from your backup.

7

Ok…turned off the stuff…however, I think I may be missing whatever file I am looking for. I installed the webtools. But I am not finding any file that lists my movies. One file that lists some (13) of my 3D movies that were being scanned for some reason apparently. But nothing that has the entire database. Thinking I may have done something not good. UGH! What is the file name I am looking for ?

8

SCORE! I had the database files backed up in 3 places…so got lucky there. Took me 5 re-installs to figure out how to get them to work. (kept getting database errors.) I finally saw what PLEX was looking for and how the OLD db’s were interacting, causing the problems. Was able to then get the right combo in the right places. :slight_smile: I can now see all the missing files IN PLEX as well as by using WEBTOOLS I was able to print out my entire list.

Thank you very much guys!!! You rock!!!

Greg